Hi Guys, I'm Lemuela and I'm a second-year medical student and this video is going to be about what to expect coming into your first year of medicine at the University of Dundee. So, the way the curriculum for first year is set up at the University of Dundee is for your first semester you'll be doing something called Foundations of Medicine. You might just think of this as some of the things that you covered in high school coming up again. So that's your biochemistry, immunology, pharmacology, pathology, all those things.
You’ll also have clinical skills classes which are held at Ninewells. For your first semester and clinical skills, you're going through the basics. So, you do general examination and all that kind of stuff. But then in your second semester, you do clinical skills more based on the systems that you're learning as well. In your first semester, you'll also have anatomy dissection.
When you're in second semester of first year of medicine, you'll cover 3 systems, cardiovascular, respiratory and gastrointestinal. And within those systems, you'll cover the basics of physiology, pathophysiology, disease profiles, treatment management, all that kind of fun stuff.
So, like I said before, you do your clinical skills based on the system that you're covering. And the same thing goes for your anatomy as well. In your first year, you have one big final exam in May, but during the year you also have two formative exams. You have one in December and then one in April. December formative primarily focuses on all your foundations of medicine stuff, whereas the April formative focuses primarily on the systems that you've covered thus far.
Another component of first year is also something called SSC, which is student selected component. So, for first year, that's basically like an essay, but you have the whole year to do it.
So that is basically your first year of medicine at the University of Dundee summed up. I understand it can be kind of daunting walking into it and you can feel anxious, but trust me, once you get going, you'll find your place, you'll find your rhythm, you'll find your study technique and it's a fun journey, but it goes by fast. So, make sure you enjoy it and make the most of it.
