What to do when you're really BEHIND at medical school

I feel behind. I am behind. I am overwhelmed. I am unable of forming sophisticated sentences.

I've just started brainstorming what to do in my situation and thought I'd share it in a post. I tried Googling what to do without success so maybe this will help some...



CJ's Damage Assessment and Strategy Tool for Medical Students that are Behind


1. Assess the damage

• take a long, hard look at yourself
• find an objective way to measure where you are and where you should be
• try to analyse why this happened. How can you prevent further damage?
• what is the gap? How long will it take to rememdy?

What I did: Used the MedBullet.com self-assessment exams to see how far behind I am and in which areas.

2. Forgive yourself so you can put the past behind you and move on

• whatever the cause of your situation, forgive yourself. In my situation, I spent too much time being a "mum" and not enough time being a "med student". I am not a bad person for doing this. It is ok. If you saw how cute my child is you'd understand. I made an error, likely becasue I want to be a good mum, and I have learned from it and am moving forward. This does not make me a bad person
• I also overestimated my knowledge and underestimated how much study I need to do. It happens. I have reassessed that my strategy is not working. I am making a new strategy
• accept this is life
• you are not a bad person
• you can still be a good doctor
• you are forgiven

Meditated. Had a wine. Doodled in my BuJo. Put the past behind me.

3. Create a new strategy

• be realsistic
• detail your strategy in as many steps as possible
• talk to others about their strategies and their advice (and take it with a grain of salt)
• what is your end-goal? Maybe its just to graduate, maybe it's to pass the AMC. Maybe you need a Leave of Absence.
• consider a tutor
• consider a new resource

Used the MedBullets study guide and tailoered it to my own schedule. Committed to reaing a chapter of Kumar's Clinical Medicine a night. Committed to watching a clinical YouTube video per day. Every day.

4. Prioritise strategy

• mistake are learning opportunities ONLY if you LEARN from them

Studying every day has become a non-negotiable now. 

Med School notes page plus clinical placements

I've added another page to this blog (see tabs at top) called "Med School notes". These are jpegs of my revision notes I'm doing for my clerkship and final clinical exam.

My revision is consisting of med school lectures and now mainly MedBullets.com which I thoroughly recommend.

My four weeks IM placement is finished. It went really well. I managed to juggle my ambulance shifts and placement. One bad thing, which became a good thing, is Bubs got bronchiolitis and was too sick for childcare so my partner had to take time off work to care for her. During that time we both decided it would be best if he took the rest of the year off work to care for Bubs and support me so I can continue juggling work and med school. So far, it has been working out really well for all three of us. I also just happened that I got a substantial pay rise at work so we don't really need both of us to be working at this point in time and are able to have one of us at home looking after the home front. Bubby does like childcare but not full-time, so perhaps she can still go casually or join a playgroup instead. Not sure yet. We're just playing it by ear at the moment. My partner is enjoying have time off work too.

Exciting: I got an email from a hospital saying they can take me for 16 weeks! Wows! It's a regional hospital about a 2.5-hour drive from home, which is completely fine because that's driveable and I can commute of my days off. I was worried I'd have to move away from home for months, so this is a good outcome. This is exciting and excellent news. It means I only have, really, four weeks of surgery to find and then that's it for clinical placements! Wow!

So my mentor said she might be able to help with the surgery, otherwise, there are five potential hospitals that I can chase up, and in fact that is my job to do today.

Things are going really well for me right now. The only thing that is bothering me is that OUM is only holding the OSCE and final clinical exam twice a year. This is very frustrating. It means that if I finish my placements a month after the OSCE, I have to wait another five months before I can sit the next one and graduate. This is what is looking like to be my situation with the OSCE in Dec and my projected completion time of January. How annoying. I have asked to do it early, but they are pretty strict with students needing to have completed all their placements first. So stay tuned for more on this one.