A typical week of a Birmingham Medical School student

A typical week for a GEC1 starts with a new problem (we learn by Problem Based Learning (PBL)), so we spend 2 hours on Tuesday morning discussing the issues surrounding the clinical problem and formulate 15 learning outcomes, which we have until Friday to complete.

Between Tuesday and Friday I spend free time between any time tabled sessions answering the learning objectives. We usually only have a few lectures to supplement PBL. On Wednesday afternoons we have 3-4 hours of anatomy teaching which I prep for over the weekend and on Mondays in a student directed teaching session.

Friday morning is our first feedback from the problem set on Tuesday. We generate questions for experts in the areas related to the problem and have them answered in sessions on Monday afternoons. The week is wrapped up on a Tuesday morning again to close last weeks’ problem, before beginning a new one.

On Thursdays we spend the day at our CBM placements, which is usually related to the PBL case in some way. Over the weekend, I complete anatomy preparation, tie up any lose ends from the PBL and have some time to relax.