Read time: 6 minutes

Vikram Thirupathirajan, a fifth-year medical student, shares his experience and tips on working from home as a medical student.

Medicine cannot be studied purely from a book or a computer. To understand its breadth and depth entirely, I’d find myself engaging in face-to-face small-group teaching – be this in the Anatomy Lab and CAL sessions in preclinical years, or clerking patients and bedside teaching in clinical years. 

So it’s safe to say the COVID-19 pandemic and the changes made to everyone’s way of daily living has caused studying medicine to take a bit of a hit too. Even after lockdown’s ease, safety is important, meaning UCL’s style of teaching has also changed for this academic year at least. 

Therefore, the standard bookwork that we all do may not suffice, as you might find yourself, as I did, having to also cater for the learning that you’d normally do away from the desk. So here are the four things that I did to try and make it work. 

One: Make your routine, break your routine

You will find this step in almost every work-from-home post. It’s important.

Before the pandemic times, everyone had a structure to their average day; at a particular time, you’d have to be at a certain place. Being sat at a desk for a long time would often make me lose track of time and with no routine and mindlessly working, I get less efficient. 

Therefore, make it a routine to attend all online teaching live, rather than watching a recording after. Make it a routine to schedule time each day to do asynchronous Moodle activities that are designed for you to complete in your own time. Make it a routine to schedule time each day to do your own studying. A routine doesn’t need to be stating each specific task that needs to be done every day. Rather, it just needs to acknowledge that you have time set aside for each type of activity – the main aim is to get structure to your working day.

However, yesterday won’t be like today and today won’t be like tomorrow – the unpredictability of it is what makes life exciting! So be prepared to break your routine at times. Sometimes online teaching may get rescheduled, or any face-to-face activities you do get scheduled coincides with online teaching. It’s fine if this happens; don’t get too focused on sticking to the routine – a balance is essential.

Two: The internet is a goldmine

Whilst no book or digital resources can beat learning the practical side of medicine in person, there are resources that can still help and provide a strong foundation. You can then build on this later once restrictions ease.

A key part of the course in the preclinical years is the Anatomy Lab. Two main resources aid in visualising anatomy well. One is Acland’s Video Atlas of Human Anatomy. This presents anatomy using dissections and prosections, which give as realistic an anatomy dissection experience as possible online. The second is using a 3D anatomy model application: UCL has access to The Human Anatomy Atlas from the Visible Body company available for students to use for free. This also allows you to visualise anatomy like you would in the Anatomy Lab.

In clinical years, the most important part of learning is being able to speak to patients, take a history and do an examination (which is also tested in preclinical years in the OCaPE). A useful resource for finding patients’ perspectives of their symptoms is Speaking Clinically – which has a database of videos of patients describing their symptoms for their different illnesses. For examinations, Moodle has numerous videos and guides for the different clinical examinations, which you can access and practice yourself or with peers in your social bubble. Geeky Medics is another invaluable resource, that has guides for clinical examination, and also for other practical skills including communication, data interpretation and essential procedures such as cannulation.

Another key thing is following a patient throughout their journey through the healthcare system. This is something that would be covered in small-group teaching and consultation clinics. Capsule is a resource that has a database of cases covering just this, through multiple-choice questions. This helps you learn all there is to know about the different diseases, i.e. symptoms, investigations, diagnosis, management.

Links to online resources:

Acland’s Video Atlas: https://aclandanatomy.com/

Visible Body Human Anatomy Atlas: https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/library-ejournal/2017/12/22/ucl-now-has-access-to-visible-body-human-anatomy-atlas-2017/

Speaking Clinically: https://speakingclinically.co.uk/

Geeky Medics: https://geekymedics.com/

Capsule: https://learn.capsule.ac.uk/login

Three: Teamwork makes the dream work

The aim of medicine being a collaborative course still hasn’t changed, and collaboration need not be in person anymore, considering the ample amount of technology available for video calling. After using it every week for six months myself, it was without doubt one of the top three reasons I passed my fourth year exams, the other two being interacting actively in all the teaching, and lots of practice questions. Therefore, I 100% recommend being in touch with your friends and peers, in person if they’re in your social bubble, but definitely online through video calling. 

All students can use their UCL emails to get free access to Microsoft Teams. Not only will keeping in touch prevent loneliness, but also collaborating is a very effective way of learning. Having regular calls to teach each other a certain topic has been the standard approach by my year’s students. Not only does this mean you learn the knowledge very well (teaching is one of the highest levels of learning!), but also ensures you are disciplined because essentially each time you have a group session is a deadline for you to learn a topic for. 

Four: There’s more to life than medicine

Working from home can get dangerous due to the place where you relax and where you work being essentially the same. This can blur the distinction between the two and we end up subconsciously doing one more than the other with an improper balance. 

This brings onto my final two points: Firstly, ensuring you have a separate dedicated workspace and a different space for relaxing. Your workspace can be anything really – from a section of your bed, to a desk or an entire room. As long as there is a definite distinction, you’ll have a track of when you’re actually working and when you’re not.

And finally, more important than ever, ensure to take plenty of time out for other activities – be this going outside for a walk, pursuing a hobby, anything. Most of us found ourselves taking a break doing something that doesn’t involve a screen or a book as we already spend so long with those while we work. Not only will this uphold your health, but also now, when we spend most of our time in a space doing activities that seem to be disconnected with the world, we will ensure we stay aware of it.