Pharmacology Intercalation
Would you intercalate, given your time again?
Yes. Intercalating arms you with skills that you don’t have the time or inclination to acquire whilst doing medicine, like skim-reading scientific papers, doing publication searches and thinking more scientifically. Also, even if you end up hating it, you’re getting an extra degree in a year- what’s not to like?!
Do you recommend Pharmacology?
I won’t deny that pharmacology is hard. I found it really interesting and it makes you realise how much they don’t bother telling us as medics (because we wouldn’t have the time to understand any of it!). However, if getting a 1st is the most important thing in the world to you, then it might not be for you. 2 out 19 people got a 1st, but then Pharmacology is an unusual intercalation and that’s a bonus.
Outline of course structure
Autumn term + 1st week of spring term: 9 lectures a week, but only one at 9.00! Then 9 weeks for project lab work and write-up. Tuesday lunchtime is for extra lectures from people doing research which are supposedly compulsory. Tutorials are in preparation for the exams and are at the start of summer term. There are 5 themes, no options. They are: Ion channels & synaptic pharmacology, GPCR’s & cell signaling, Muscle, Pain and the CNS, and Techniques & industry. They do NOT have equal lecture content- theme 1 is big and theme 5 very short.
Assessment
3 exams: 1 is very specifically on lecture material, 2 is more synoptic, and 3 is on techniques, data analysis and data interpretation (which, contrary to popular belief, are different things). Each exam is 20%. You have 4 essays to do during the year or 3 essays and 1 data analysis. They’re 10% in total. Project is 20% and your previous year’s mark is 10%. My exams were 22nd, 23rd and 26th of May, which was a bit brutal!
Department support
You don’t really need to have understood much pharmacology prior to taking the course- it’s mostly stand-alone. We have a personal tutor who was mostly absent and seemed confident that we’d all get a 1st (ha!). However we’ve given him a bad review so medics might be assigned a different one next year! Individual lecturers were really happy to see us if we needed anything explaining outside of lectures.
Weekly workload
If you don’t want to work until the night before the essay deadline (there are 2, you hand in 2 bit of work each time) then you don’t have to, but revision will be harder! I worked like a banshee over the Easter holidays for finals, but it was amazing to have a Christmas holiday off! Make the most of it! Go skiing or something! It’s a good idea (!) to read the day’s lectures and make notes on them before they build on that knowledge the next day; else you’re pretty lost before you know it.
Enjoyment
Some of the lecture material’s a bit dry, but find a good review in the reading list and it all starts to make sense (and you feel very smug about understanding it). If you really hate a small section of lectures, you can just ignore them and not answer a question on it in the exam! I enjoyed my project the most, though. It was in the Psychopharmacology unit, which is modern and well equipped. I wasn’t in a lab, which was a relief, as I was analyzing data from two similar clinical experiments, which sounds dull but my supervisor was awesome and the head of department there is about the most scarily knowledgeable man I’ve ever met. Plus the place is full of psychiatrists, who are hilarious and give you tips on passing Psych in 3rd year!
Subject matter: what you expected, flexible, stimulating?
I thought it would be about learning loads of drugs and what they do, but in fact it’s broader than that, and involves more experimental techniques and really preclinical stuff that’s nowhere near human use yet. I was terrified by a biophysics lecture in the first week, but it turned out that it’s only a very small part of one unit. Most of the content wasn’t very medical, but Emma Robinson does some stuff about antidepressants, there’s stuff on vascular disease and stroke, which is all useful for us. There’s not flexibility in lectures, but in the exams you have 3 questions to answer out of 3 sections where there are 3 choices, so there’s some room for manoeuvre.
Projects: scope, outcomes (conferences, publications etc)
Medics are encouraged to do a lab project as it’s their only opportunity to do so. Your research is guided by a supervisor who is usually getting you to do something as a part of someone else’s work that’s going for publication. You can do a library project but they’re dull, you work by yourself and you’re very unlikely to get published. There is a wide choice of projects and you list your 3 favourites. I’m going to a conference to present my paper this summer, and they’re giving me money! I don’t know whether I’ll get my name on a paper yet though.
Overall: Good bits and Bad bits
Project was great. Having very few lectures, lots of lie-ins and late nights was great. Some of the material was very hardcore sciencey and difficult.
Other comments
I’m glad I’ve done something other than medicine for a year. Not having seen patient for such a long time reaffirmed my desire to be a doctor, and we know a lot more about some areas of medicine than most medics having done this course!
Mark out of ten
8/10
