Be it the duration of the courses or the effort required, initially, to get into the programmes with some fierce competition going along and then later on just to be neck to neck with the co-students...
COVER STORY
Ask any student, and he will let you know that the toughest and the most energy-sapping and brain draining studies are that of LLB and MBBS. Everything associated with these two degrees is already super-sized, in comparison to any other professional degrees around. Be it the duration of the courses or the effort required, initially, to get into the programmes with some fierce competition going along and then later on just to be neck to neck with the co-students, let alone clearing the degree with flying colours. The most frequent query and point of amazement for the students coming from Engineering, Computer, Administrative or any other backgrounds seems to be the fact that the MBBS students have to cope with ‘huge and heavyweight’ books for every subject in MBBS. These books seem to students of other fields as thick as encyclopedias.
It is a known fact that the budding doctors are used to huge, heavy and ‘super-sized’ books. As put by one of my friends, who is a mechanical engineer: “Your course books are heavy enough to outweigh you twice – maybe even thrice!” Though it was supposed to be sarcastic, I heartily took it as a compliment.
The amazing fact is that the bulk of MBBS students actually study from these heavyweight books unlike those of the other degree programmes where students tend to rely more on the common notes, handouts and assignments provided by the teachers and professors of their respective subjects. Seldom do these students go through even few pages of their books till the dreaded D-day and then there are those who don’t even buy the books in the first place! There, however, always are few exceptions; but, mind you, only ‘few’ exceptions.
The scenario, when it comes to MBBS, is totally different. For every subject, you have to completely study the textbook of at least one writer. After that, students have to combine this with some short, quick glance, reference books or even notes from the textbooks of other writers on the same subject. If one is to identify a degree where the maximum number of books, including reference books and updated researches are being utilized for the simple, basic study purpose then it has to be nothing else but MBBS.
When starting with the first year of the five-year MBBS programme, most of the aspiring doctors in Pakistan face two dilemmas: what books to study and how to study! For instance, Anatomy is a subject which is usually covered in the First Professional MBBS. The most sought after famous international book series for Gross Anatomy include R.J. Last, Snell and B.D. Chaurasia. And, for the exceptional few, even Gray’s can do the needful. So, a student usually picks up one of these as his/her main textbook and consult other series for updates, interesting additions and understanding of different, and sometimes even difficult topics as well. Then there are many shorter, quick glance books which include baby versions of the textbooks, pocket-size review books and local publications. Not to forget an Atlas, the pictorial catalogue of the Human Anatomy, that is absolutely necessary for every medical student to consult. The key is making a combination of textbooks that works best for the student, as it is important to retain the matter which is possible if you like the book you use.
There are some students who might consult all books, and then there are those who only opt for two or three books. The catch, however, is that all of this might not even be the seventy percent of the subject Anatomy, it is just the Gross Anatomy section. There are other sections with their respective books as well like Histology (books including Wheater, Laeeq, High Yield, etc), Embryology (Langman, KLM, High Yield) General Anatomy, Neuro-anatomy (Snell, Merchant, etc), not to forget the Practicals. And all this is just one subject!
Thus, medical students in their early days, seek and are provided with advice by their seniors. In my case, my first advice and first few books came from my father’s friend’s daughter who was, at that time, in her Final Year of studies in one of the most reputable Government Medical colleges of the province. She asked me if I could read, understand or speak Korean. To an obvious negative reply, she told me to assume that my neighbours have a Korean sentence encrypted on their boundary wall, and, every day for the next year I see that line while coming into or going out of my house. At the end of the year, if the same line is written in my question paper and the answer choices include Persian, Russian, Korean, Japanese and Greek, I would certainly get full marks, even though I may never knew, understand, speak or read any of the mentioned languages. It’s the photo-print in my brain, the visual memory that tends to stick. She told me that MBBS is something where one has to read and observe as much as possible and where having good visual memory really pay dividends. Coming from a person who herself was a meritorious student throughout, I was a bit startled. Did I make a mistake opting for Pre-Medical in the Intermediate when everyone around me was opting for Pre-Engineering and the Intermediate colleges for Men were not able to come up with a single complete section of the Pre-Medical students as compared to eight or more overflowing ones for the Pre-Engineering students?
The second, and another sane advice, came from my uncle that somewhat calmed me. At that time, he was in his attic cum study-room, with all the medical books and empty tea mugs, charts, markings and illustrations strewn around him. “It is quite simple, Ali,” he said “There are just three things you need to know and do, and all this will be a piece of cake!” After a silence for an imperceptible moment, he continued: “Parho, samjho, ratto (Read, understand, learn by heart). Just do these three things - in any sequence of your choice - and I promise you will never forget!”
“Any sequence?” was my immediate inquiry.
“Yes. You can do these three things in any order, but you have to do all three.” As I thought over it, with every passing day, I realized his advice was workable.
Finally, there is a yet another unique concept amongst the doctors ‘reads’! An average medical student tends to read the textbook at least two to three times. Usually, the first read entails the student just going through all the text, while marking and highlighting difficult and important lines and topics. The second read encompasses reading all the highlighted topics, doing minor additions and during the third read learning-by-heart the topics along with the teacher’s notes and different add-ons from other text and reference books.
The last day revisions before viva and theory examinations are usually done using the shorter, review books. Thus, the ‘number of reads’ is a general concept that exists in the world of medical students, even for the post-graduate examinations. Students tend to apply to sit for the examinations after they have done at least two reads of their text books. By the time the paperwork gets completed, they are usually over with their third read!
The point to note is that these are the very same books which the doctor might already have studied twice, thrice or even four times during his medical school years!
At the end, the Korean thing might work, too, so maybe my advisor was right!
If a doctor is switching educational pathways and professional careers after completing MBBS, most of the people from other fields, consider him/her a novice pursuing altogether new and different subjects. But, a doctor always has an edge over others; he has a history, an in-built mechanism for studying comparatively thicker books. Thus, the newer, regular-size books might appear peanuts to the doc! The other competitive edge is that of the extraordinary number of presentations that the docs are used to during their studies, be it in researches, during clinical rounds, bed-side histories or examinations!
Studying it the MBBS way or not is a very debatable topic; it surely cannot be applied to the educational degrees where there is ample research and calculations or even those requiring fieldwork. But one thing remains for sure: amongst professionals, doctors do tend to enjoy the highest IQ level. As far as their study pattern and style is concerned, they must be doing something right or at least something that is required by their field of study to do so, aren’t they?
Dr. Khwaja Ali Shahid is a health care leader, traveller and a seasoned writer for local English newspapers. He tweets as @Ali_Shahid82
