r/medicalschooluk

Final year student. Did my OSCE resits recently and feel AWFUL. 2 A-E stations that I feel like I was incredibly awkward in (I feel like I normally do well and am calm in practice). Other stations I feel like I just didn’t do enough. Had to look at some MSK X-rays, 1 of them I feel like didn’t go so well, esp bc the examiner didn’t look too pleased.

Feel soo annoyed with myself bc I got my 1st choice for F1 and my rotations were good, and I only failed the 1st OSCE by 1% and I feel worse about these ones. I don’t wanna have to resit the whole year and then potentially not get my 1st choice place again.

If anyone has any stories of OSCE stations you thought you did bad in but passed? Or anything really. Mainly just wanted to vent I guess. Just feel awful.

I’ve noticed something similar recently (I’m a first year, btw). At first, I thought our short written answer exams and MCQs were mostly testing tiny lecture details, so I kept trying to memorise everything exactly as presented or by learning the “normal process” step-by-step. But now I’m starting to think the examples/applications in lectures, usually diseases, lesions, drug effects, deficiencies, etc., are actually the real focus of what gets tested. I haven’t yet seen many exam questions that focus purely on normal physiology; it feels like the majority are framed from a pathological angle. The rest of the lecture often just explains the background mechanisms from which that disease emerges.

So instead of viewing lectures as: “Here is a process you must recite” I’m starting to see them more as: “Here is normal physiology/anatomy, now here is what happens when part of it breaks”

A lot of questions seem to test whether you can apply understanding rather than just repeat facts, probably as preparation for clinical reasoning later on. To answer application-style questions properly, you still need a solid recall of the underlying mechanisms anyway, because you’re essentially working backwards from an abnormal finding to the normal system that failed.

So studying with the expectation of application questions actually feels more efficient because you end up learning both:

• the clinical/application presentation
• the underlying mechanisms and normal function

In that sense, the examiner kind of “hits two birds with one stone”.

The key shift for me has been realising it’s not about memorising every sentence of a lecture, but understanding how altering one step in a normal system produces a final presentation or question stem.

So now I’m thinking next semester I’ll approach it more deliberately:

• first build solid understanding of normal structure and function
• then layer in what happens when things go wrong
• and only closer to exams, once the basics are stable, focus more on disease mechanisms and how they group together (including treatments where relevant)

I’m not completely sure if this is the most efficient method yet (still testing it), but it feels more coherent than brute memorisation.

For example, instead of learning a disease as an isolated fact, I try to ask:

• what part of the normal system failed?
• what downstream effects follow from that?
• what is still preserved?
• what would actually appear in a question stem or patient?

Even anatomy becomes easier this way because questions often work backwards from a deficit pattern rather than asking you to list structures.

Interestingly, focusing more on application has also improved my memory of the basics, because you can’t answer properly without understanding the underlying physiology.

Overall, it feels less like memorising disconnected facts and more like building chains of cause and effect, which makes revision a bit less stressful.

I’m a 4th year. I haven’t presented at any conferences aside from mandatory ones at my uni that everyone does. My networking is currently 0 , no medical family or family friends, but I have met nice doctors I probably could approach for research and stuff but I just have no ideas about anything, I’m just not really interested in research although it feels like something I need to at least try and start before I finish next year.

I spend a lot of time revising, so much so i sacrificed all hobbies during the most recent exam season so any spare time I get I kind of don’t want to fill it with more academics.

Is this something I should really be stressing over or can it wait until fy1?

I guess how important really is this stuff and do I need to lock in

for context i’m a medical student on placement.

I was timetabled to be in paeds A&E for the morning. I arrived and asked if there was a doctor around that I could shadow. they said no but there is an ANP. I thought right ok not ideal but it will have to do.

The audacity of this ANP really shook me. Firstly she said there was a PA student that she had to train, even though we got there at the same time. So she said oh you can take it in turns to see patients with me. I wasn’t doing anything so just did some anki on my phone. she sees me when i’m on my phone and comes over, “i can’t have you sat on your phone, you’ll have to go and look for learning in a different department”. Understandably I was fuming but what can you do.

This really cemented the feeling that doctors and medical students are being more and more ostracized in the NHS. It’s a sad thing to see that we’re hated for wanting to aspire to more and work hard. Sorry rant over.

I’ve intercalated after my fourth year, meaning that currently I’ve only got one more year left of medicine after this.

My supervisors have offered me the chance to continue straight into a PhD before returning to final year, adding an extra 3 years.

The project is something I’ll enjoy, with room for expansion and tailoring. I love the team and the university, both I trust and have been supportive. It’s fully funded tuition + stipend.
I’m not too distraught about having to relearn parts of the curriculum for my return, retraining my brain would be unavoidable no matter what stage I choose to do it at.

I have always planned on doing a PhD at some point, and didn’t consider that I’d be given that opportunity earlier (I expected that I’d end up doing it during specialty training). I’m aware that doing a PhD later on may mean that I get more generous funding, perhaps some benefits of already being a doctor.

Has anyone been in this situation? What did you decide?
Is there anything in particular I should consider before relaying my decision?
Does doing the PhD now have any benefits?

Do you ever reuse the stuff you learn and have to be tested on it in later years? Is it content that I should be reviewing over summer in preparation for 2nd year?

I've been struggling to keep up with all the content and figuring out how to study this year. I honestly am not feeling confident for my summative this year. I don't want to be incompetent and find it difficult next year so if anyone has any advice on what I should do I'd be really grateful!

I had pretty bad anxiety and depression through med school which wasn't managed the best so I've been on antidepressants for nearly 4 years. I'm starting to come off them now but I'm a final year and so my trust for my FY1 job have asked me to complete an occupational health screening. As the title suggest, I don't know how much to put - also are they likely to want a meeting with me?

Been doing a solid 40-50 questions a day for the past few weeks and my scores are sitting around 65-70% which apparently is fine but it doesn't feel fine.

The thing that's throwing me is the question style. Passmed feels like it's testing whether you know the fact. The actual UKMLA feels like it's testing whether you can think. Like every answer is technically defensible and you're just picking the least wrong one.

Had one recently where the "correct" answer was to do nothing and reassure, and I'd gone straight for investigation because that's what every question bank drills into you.

Genuinely curious whether people find certain question banks closer to the real thing. I've heard Quesmed is better for the style but haven't tried it. Also whether anyone's actually bombing PassMed but doing fine in the real thing or vice versa.

Fourth year so not sitting it till early next year but trying to build good habits now rather than panic cramming later.

I genuinely don’t believe OSCEs are a true measure of a person’s clinical ability. While it’s great we have come a long way from the old surgeon grilling each med student on something different to a standardized exam, a huge reason people fail them is because most students don’t actually know what they’re being marked against. At least for early years at my university the lack of support is astounding

At least at my uni, we’re taught clinical skills like history taking, counselling, examinations etc., but we’re never really given a proper checklist of what examiners specifically want us to hit. Compare that to written exams where expectations are much clearer, there are mark schemes, example videos, and a defined structure.

With OSCEs, we’re told to learn entire examinations, but then in the actual station they deliberately cut parts out because it “won’t fit” into a 5–8 minute station. Instead, they interrupt you halfway through to ask random questions at the end under pressure. So what’s the point of AKTs and learning full examinations properly if we’re never actually assessed on performing the complete exam?

The stations which last 8 minutes were often split into mini-stations within stations. So instead of assessing clinical ability, it starts feeling like a game where success depends on being able to balance time while also think about the question and what not. Now granted that GPs do this on a daily basis but it just seems u fair to those students who like to take their time thinking of an answer and writing down whatever is going on in their brain which isn’t possible when you have a tiny clock in front of you counting down each second while you realise every mark is slipping away. This is my opinion does not test whether or not you are a good clinician.

What also baffles me is the lack of transition time between stations. We literally had no break between finishing one station and moving to the next. Sometimes you have to rush across the hall, sit down out of breath, and immediately start reading the next prompt without even 30 seconds to reset mentally. Adding one minute between stations would barely increase the overall exam time but would massively improve fairness and performance consistency.

I understand OSCEs are supposed to standardise assessment, but right now they feel more like an exercise in time management, memorising buzzwords, and gaming station structure than actually assessing whether someone would be safe and competent with patients.

Curious if other med students feel the same or if this is just my experience. Not looking to pick a fight or anything, please correct me if I’m wrong in any department or you have had different experiences because my OSCEs so far have been traumatic to say the least.

I’m a 2nd year med student and honestly I feel a bit lost academically right now.

Growing up, I was always the “smart” kid. I did well in school, especially biology (chem and physics humbled me a bit lol). Getting into med school was probably the proudest achievement of my life. I knew I wouldn’t suddenly be the best anymore because everyone here was high-achieving too, but I still expected to at least be up there.

Instead, I’ve realised I’m… pretty average? Usually around the mean. Meanwhile people around me are getting merits/distinctions. Last year I worked insanely hard just to get a merit, only to then realise there was an even higher grade above it 😭

This year I basically sacrificed my social/personal life to focus on studying (not that I had much of one anyway). I’m naturally introverted, I genuinely enjoy staying home, eating good food, watching movies/TV, and relaxing. I thought not having loads of hobbies or nights out would give me more time and maybe an advantage academically.

My main revision method is making Anki cards from lectures/outcomes. I’m VERY good at memorisation. Anatomy, cranial nerves, pathways, muscle actions etc. I can grind those out really well. But I struggle more with application-style questions and SBAs. Those “50/50” questions genuinely stress me out and can ruin my mood during exams.

We just had our final written exam yesterday. Weirdly, I came out feeling awful about it. I thought I was well prepared, especially because OSCEs were what I was most worried about this year. But the written paper felt so obscure? It felt like they tested random tiny details mentioned once in a lecture instead of the concepts they constantly emphasised. The straightforward memory questions were fine for me, but the application-heavy questions really threw me off. I guess also topics that I didn't revise because they were genuinely boring or not "high yield" also did come, but cmon weve all been there at some point lol

Then afterwards I spoke to friends and they all seemed way more confident about answers I was unsure on. Some of the questions felt like:

• year 1 content I’d forgotten
• things I’d literally never heard before
• or pure 50/50 guesses

And now I’m spiralling a bit because I wanted to do well this year so I’d feel prepared going into clinical years.

I think what’s bothering me most is that I’m starting to wonder if hard work alone just isn’t enough for me to actually excel in med school. Like maybe I’m just not naturally good at the type of thinking med school exams reward.

The scary part is that Year 3 onwards is supposed to become even more case/application-based, and then there’s the UKMLA, which everyone says is full of “best answer” style questions. So now I’m questioning whether my revision technique is actually effective at all.

For people further along in medicine:

• Did anyone else go from being top of their class to feeling average in med school?
• How did you transition from memorisation-heavy studying to clinical/application thinking?
• What revision methods actually helped for AKTs/UKMLA style exams?
• And how do you know if your study method is working when you walk into exams feeling prepared but walk out confused?

Also for context, I’m Asian, so there’s definitely some pressure tied to achievement/family expectations too. And honestly, being seen as “smart” has always been a part of my identity, so struggling with this has hit harder than I expected.

Sorry for the long rant. Just needed to get this out somewhere.

Please only answer if you know anything about UCL attendance I’m already in a week long anxiety attack

Please be nice I can’t stop crying

I’m a UK medical student repeating 4th year due to mental health difficulties last year. This year I’ve genuinely improved a lot academically and personally, but I’ve had ongoing issues with attendance related to fatigue/mental health/health problems and I’ve now received a Stage 3 attendance concern notification from my medical school after reaching 20 recorded absence days.

The email says I now have to attend a formal meeting with the Faculty Tutor + Divisional Tutor where possible outcomes could include:
- Support to Study plan
- Learning Agreement
- referral to Support to Study panel
- referral to Fitness to Practise
- interruption/suspension etc

A few important things:
- I already had a meeting recently with my divisional tutor and signed a Learning Agreement
- Since that meeting, my attendance genuinely has improved
- I’ve been in regular contact with support services/personal tutor
- I have NOT been hiding absences — if anything I have overreported too much because the system makes us log minimum blocks of time even when partially absent. And I’ve been afraid of getting unauthorised absences so I over reported to be safe. Which was obviously a big mistake
- I’ve also attended out of hours/evenings/weekends tom keep up clinically
- I’m studying hard and feel more prepared for exams than I ever have before

My plan before the meeting is:
- not missing any further placement days
- attending additional out-of-hours sessions and logging them to demonstrate ongoing engagement and hopefully reduce the net recorded absence time below the threshold
- sending an email to the divisional tutor acknowledging that I understand attendance is important and that I take the concerns seriously
- emphasising that I remain fully engaged with the course and have been proactive in catching up on missed teaching/clinical exposure
- asking if there are any additional steps I can take before the meeting to improve the situation and demonstrate engagement

I’m panicking because I don’t know how serious Stage 3 attendance reviews usually are in ucl and whether this realistically turns into FtP/exam restriction/interruption territory, especially with exams approaching. Because they say stuff like this a lot, but it’s never that serious, but I’ve never had a stage three before.

Has anyone been through something similar

Every year this subreddit is flooded with depressed and anxious students around exams season. Exam anxiety is normal however it seems to becoming more frequent and more extreme. We already know that mental health is declining in 18-26 year olds across the whole country for various reasons but medicine seems particularly insidious.

I’ve noticed there is a big gap between what medical schools think is causing a mental health crisis and the actual causes. Often reasons are believed to be due to poor time management and becoming overwhelmed with work but this is quite surface level. The advice is also surface level without addressing the causes.

Medicine fundamentally attracts individuals who are perfectionists, and this is schemata of thinking is wholly necessary to get into medical school but completely incompatible when studying medicine.

Students have their lives meticulously planned from 11. Some from even the age of 8. 11+, GCSEs, UCAT, interviews, A-Levels and a plethora of other activities. Studying is optimised so that there is no chance to fail. You cannot fail if you know everything. Most medical students have never failed an exam.

But medical school is the first time where you cannot know everything. For many it is the first time in their lives that the probability of failure exists. Uncertainty appears and anxiety manifests. There is so much to lose. The sunk cost fallacy affects us deeply.

The fatal loop begins. Procrastination due to being overwhelmed. Cramming due to the procrastination. Sacrificing social life as it is the “normal” thing to do. Sacrificing physical activities as it is “temporary”. Sacrificing eating properly. Sacrificing sleep. Sacrificing mental wellbeing.

And we have optimised our studying so much that we have created the idea that we can know everything. Thousands upon thousands of anki cards.

Social media compounds this. “Lock in” influencers like Kay Chung who promote the most awful messaging. Others promote a lifestyle which is completely unrealistic with 20 hobbies and constant travelling which makes students question what they are doing wrong.

There is also cultural background to content with. Many students are second generation immigrants. Failure is drilled in as a concept worse than death. And mental health is often discounted and ignored.

So many students have cognitive distortions. All or nothing thinking, catastrophising, shame. And deprogramming this thinking is so hard.

However an interesting phenomenon has appeared. There was an attempt to alleviate this pressure. In the UK deciles are no longer important for foundation training. In the USA step 1 is now pass/fail. But instead of supposedly alleviating this pressure it has moved it. There is now a pressure to complete research and other activities and has actually made the playing field more uneven.

Another huge cause of anxiety is often completely ignored by medical school faculty and that is the future of medicine. We are watching the system crumble before our eyes. There used to be light at the end of the tunnel. Now it is a gaping pit. All this work and for what?

There is also the fundamental inequity between medical students. Some are lucky and come from backgrounds where there is always something to fall back on. Others have to work during medical school. Some do not need to count the pennies to afford question banks and materials and other do.

My advice to medical students is that you need to reprogram the way you think. You will not know everything. And that is okay. If you fail an exam it is not the end of the world. There are many chances. And if you fail medical school it is not the end of the world either. Do not let the fear control you and your life. Do not live life based on mile stones, you will only be miserable.

Our self views have become infected with an almost capitalistic mindset of constant growth and optimisation at the expense of our current selves. Focusing on your looks, your academic attainment and your wealth with the false promise that it will bring future happiness.

“I will be happy once I pass this exam!” No, you will only be happy at this current moment. It is a balancing act of the correct amount of investment in your future self and your current self and you cannot neglect your current self.

Spend time with your family and friends. Enjoy the sun on your face and the feel of grass beneath your feet. Organise yourself and work hard. Optimise your studying, but for the purpose of doing more, but to give your more time to be present in your current life. At the end of the day it is a job and it does not define you.

Hi,

First thing to say is I'm actually a vet student but the vet student sub doesn't get much traffic and I figured my question would apply just as much to you guys.

When trying to distill down the ridiculous info dumps we get given in lectures into something vaguely manageable - I'm always told the same thing - "use the learning objectives, provided you can answer them you won't get any surprises in the exams". Does anyone have an experience of this working for them?

My main problem with this advice is two-fold. Firstly, over the course of the year we are given something along the lines of 1500-2000 LOs so focussing on them doesn't seem overly to reduce the workload, but mostly it's that they can be interpreted multiple different ways and so "how much is enough"? Most of the LOs we are given could be answered with 2 sentences or 20 pages depending upon how you interpret them.

For example: "Describe the blood supply to the abdominal wall" or "Explain how deficits in motor function can be used to estimate the location of damage to the motor system"

If you find that using the LOs actually works - can you explain your process and how you choose to interpret them? Sorry if this seems like an obvious question - thanks guys!

Is the above true?

It has been months now since the start of the academic year and tired is an UNDERSTATEMENT. All I want to do is sleep, maybe go for a nice lake landscape and well... sleep.

I am to the point where having a shower or cooking feels exhausting. I am sleepy, I feel fatigued. The issue is that is not a matter of anaemia or sleep deprivation. Sleep helps your body and mind but this is the type of tired that sleep cannot help.

I know the simple thing would be take some days off. Yeah, that did not help especially now that we are near the end of the academic year. Anyone feeling the same?

If yes, I hope it goes away... It will but then once again a new academic year will start and it will be back to the same situation. Apologies for the rant but I really needed one.

Hi there,

For anyone who has used the revise MLA question bank, would you say it's quite representative of the ukmla.

Thanks!!!!

I’m a first-year medical student and honestly I’m panicking a bit because I’ve got exams in 3 days and I feel like the lectures and exams barely match each other.

The lectures spend ages explaining the “big picture” mechanism of something, the physiology behind a pathway, clinical relevance, how systems interact, why something happens, etc. You leave thinking, “right, clearly this is the important part.”

Then the actual exam asks about one random word hidden in tiny font on slide 52 that the lecturer never even mentioned aloud, and if they di,d does not explain.

It feels less like the exams are testing whether you actually understand the material, and more like they are testing whether you happened to memorise every tiny detail hidden somewhere on a slide. Quite often, in the main mechanism or central idea of an entire lecture barely even shows up in the exam paper.

I understand the need to move beyond broad concepts into finer detail, but it feels like the balance is completely skewed. Almost every question ends up focusing on obscure fragments rather than the actual physiological or pathological reasoning that the lectures spend most of their time explaining.

Anatomy is probably the worst for this. I spend hours learning movements, compartments, innervation patterns, lesion localisation, and the actual clinical reasoning behind functional deficits. I try to build a mental map of how the limb works as an integrated system.

Then the exam question ends up being something like:
“which branch passes through X structure?”
despite the branch barely being mentioned in the lecture, being unclear on the diagrams, or being extremely difficult to reason out logically from first principles.

It has started to feel less like applied anatomy and more like a scavenger hunt for microscopic facts hidden somewhere in the slides.

The other frustrating thing is that our formative questions apparently aren’t even very representative. Faculty themselves admitted some are outdated, include material no longer taught, and don’t really reflect the current exam standard well. I have tried passmed etc but it doesn't reflect the types of questions we are asked or the knowledge we need to know (I am in my pre-clinical)

I got around 80% on my mid-semester formative material and then got 50% in the real exam, which destroyed my confidence because I thought I understood the content reasonably well. I can study properly,y but because the minute detail requires research in your own time, I end up spending more time doing that.

Now revision feels strange because I don’t even know what to trust anymore:

• The lecture's emphasis?
• The slides?
• obscure details?
• old formative questions?
• textbook minutiae?

Is this just normal in medicine, or does my course sound unusually detail-heavy?

Hey are there are upper year students who can guide me a bit. I’m really overwhelmed with content and don’t know how to revise

Largely just a vent post but my god the midwives are unpleasant. I’m trying not to tar them with the same brush but my god every interaction I have had (4 weeks) there has been some kind of attitude problem. I am pretty friendly and bubbly and always introduce myself but as soon as I say I’m a medical student they adopt this very hostile attitude. It literally costs nothing to be polite and respectful, even if you’re busy or not interested in teaching.

Even a registrar this morning had a hump and was very belittling for literally no reason apart from being stressed. Don’t take it out on us…

They all walk round with a face like a slapped arse. Are they taught to be like this or does it attract a certain personality.

Bizarre.