Medical Summer School in Manchester

I was a little afraid that when I decided to write about Manchester Summer School almost two month after it finished. I thought I won´t be so enthusiastic. But somehow, it didn´t happen. I still think it was fantastic! And I am sure and I can prove it to you :).

My ten days trip to Manchester started by me getting lost. Obviously. Me - alone in Manchester. Like that would ever work out in means of orientation in new places. :-) There is so much more I could write about that weekend before Summer School but I am actually gonna skip that for now with statement "Couchsurfing is awesome". :)

In general, here are the best experience of my stay:
Best experience: 
- I played Laser Tag :) (well, not the most important one but it came first to me)
- I drilled a hole in a bone (well a fake bone, but still), also tried more laparoscopy, sewing, inserting a chest drain to a pig rib cage and much much more
- I had a lot of good food (including Jamie´s!!! and Red Hot Buffet)
- I have experienced UK university canteen
- I have realized that there are a lot of teachers and professors around the world that are actually nice and wants to help you and teach you
- I got many valuable email addresses, and book with a signature
- I have heard people on an international level, professors that publish in best journals, and others that write awesome books and textbooks
- I met sooo many awesome people!
- OMG and I have almost forgotten doubledeckers... that every tourist loves!!!

Organization:
I have to thank our organizators. They dedicated their last week of holidays (and I am sure more than that week) to helping foreign students, showing them around, organizing social programme every single day.. and still had enough energy to party with us in the evening! :)

Accomodation: 
Small but clean accomodation at dorms. Common showers and toilet. Rooms for one. No problems with reception. You could come any time as you had your own entrance card and keys. Beautiful social room with a  piano!

Food:
You get 2 food tickets. I left one for lunch and one for coffee break. Breakfast and Dinner is on you. However, almost every day´s social programme was somehow connected to food with very good discounts. So you won´t be starving!

Money:
Social programme was not so expensive for UK standarts. And we were given many group discounts. You payed for dorms - also less then normal due to the deal - and fee for the summer school. Whole amount from the fee went for organization - that means no proffesor got paid.

And if you are still interested - details in the next article :)

Did I register right?

So. I know registration is already over (more or lesss). But I noticed a lot of students had problems with new electronic registration. So here is a short review on how to register:

1. Open AIS.That means you need to have your ISIC and password. Change to English (upper right corner). Click on "Study evidence" in the left column. 
2. Under the headline "List of registration forms" choose your year (so it will go blue) and than click on "Create electronic registration". Follow. 
3. Click on the little icon of person and choose "Enrollment of courses and credits". Click on "Add course" and "Add course from study plan". Choose all the subjects for current SEMESTER (= not all of them). Do the same for Compulsory elective courses if you are suppose to have any. Choose elective courses if you want to. Check your credits in "Credit overview". 
4. If you do not know what subjects you have this year, follow this link:  http://www.upjs.sk/en/faculty-of-medicine/current-students/ and click on "Curriculum for GM/DM". It will automatically downloads a Word document with all information needed. 
5. For registration to be completed you need to pay tution fee and your ISIC prolongation. Than - if you did everything right - when you click on that little icon of person and choose "Electronic registration" and "Details of el. reg." - everything should have green thumb up. If not, something is wrong. Try to see what part of registration it is and follow any instruction it gives you. 
6. To pay for ISIC card, either go to Rectorate UPJŠ at Šrobárova 2, or pay by bank transfer. You can find all information about ISIC cards here:  http://www.upjs.sk/pracoviska/ciakt/aio/administration-of-personal-identification-cards. 
7. To pay for school, you either pay through IMS ( http://www.ims-medstudy.com/_Medical_School_6yr_Kosice ) or directly to school. For any information about payment byIMS, you can write to Mrs.Katarina Szikhartová (szikhartova@intradegroup.sk).  Now for payment directly to uni, you can write to Mrs. Beáta Mošková (beata.moskova@upjs.sk) as I did not find information on our webpages.

PLEASE, ALWAYS, ALWAYS CHECK THE BANK ACCOUNT BEFORE SENDING THE MONEY. EVEN IF YOU SHOULD WRITE AN EMAIL TO SCHOOL EVERY SINGLE SEMESTER OR YEAR. YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT COULD HAVE CHANGED.

You can find any other information here: http://www.upjs.sk/public/media/2263/Electronic_registration.pdf.

Manchester II

On Sunday, I came to Manchester University dorms. It was a typical student dorms for what can I say. I was happy we didn´t have to share rooms and impressed they actually had a common student room with a piano. Oh, and don´t forget that swimming pool just next to it. In the evening, there was an orientation meeting. We were divided into groups we have chosen before according the topics and were ready to start on Monday.

Day 1:

There were two main streams - surgery and internal. You could choose between 7 main groups. (More: HERE) I was in Surgery Stream. So everything I have attended was related to surgery. To be exact, I have chosen POE group - plastics, orthopedis, ENT (ears, nose, throat). I am sure those seven groups are actually more than enough to choose something you like. Our first day was dedicated to the lectures describing "The Day In the Life Of..." I think it was a great starter. It might have been a little too long but I greatly appreciated it as I didn´t know much about UK medical system. The short overviews tought me about differet kinds of specialties, how to become a certain specialist, and most importantly what the specialist really does.

Day 2:

More lectures. Mostly on the topics of our groups. For example, "General surgical emergencies" or "ENT pathology". Good to revise our knowledge. As there were a great mixture of all of the years, I am sure that everybody learned something. People were getitng to know each other on coffee breaks more. Organizators were available for us non-stop to help us with any issues or questions. Also, there were interesting bookstalls for a whole week. And in the evening - more social programme! :)

Day 3: 

Workshops!!! You know that all medical students love workshops. It makes us feel like we can actually do something real. There were a few main workshops that everybody could attend together with more lectures. In my group, we had lectures focused on presence and future of plastics/orthopedics surgery. We went through burns management or future carrier and specialties related talks. Obviously, real workshops were actually the best part of it! :P

So there was:
Basic Orthopedics Workshop, Basic and Intermediate Surgical Skills or Anesthesia Procedures, Laparascopy or Trauma skills or Life Support and more. (Internal stream had also Gynecology and Obstetrics workshops or Oncology Talks, too).

Day 4:

Research. The art of publishing. My shocking discovery was that unlike in my countries, medical students abroad actually start publishing at very young age - meaning NOW. Some of them even before they go to medical schoools! They take break from med schools to do different kind of research, too. Just learning about this and the whole "how to publish" topic was really important. I am sure I have actually learned a lot.

Day 5:

Last day. Anatomy Challenge Final! You can see the buzzers on the picture. More talks and debates with proffesors. Information about UK system.  Last party at dorms. And more :)

I really cannot describe everything - there is so much to tell! The whole social programme, fun we had, Manchester itself, also awesome teachers and techniques we learned. For sure, the best time of my summer this year.

Many more awesome photos from summer school: http://www.doctorsacademy.org/AcademyCMS/SS_2012_Gallery.html