We were a interested in a report from the The Independent (a leading British newspaper) highlighted the case of one British Medical Student. It relates to students from University College London, specifically the transfer of student information to the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The case in question is that of Umar Farouk Allmutallab, arrested in the US over terrorism charges from Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day.  To refresh your memory on this, read reports on this here from The Times and here from the BBC. He was, of course the former student and president of the University College London (UCL) Islamic Society. There now seem to be repercussions for other Muslim students studying at UCL.

One British medical student has apparently had personal information passed to US authorities as a result of being a member of the UCL Islamic Society. He was quoted by the Independent on the 1st April as saying the following.

I feel frustrated and outraged. To pass on 900 student details because they were members of UCL Islamic Society is ridiculous. The reason I joined the society was for socio-cultural reasons. I’ve never seen the guy [he's referring to Abdulmutallab]. I wasn’t here when he was at university.

Is does seem a little extreme. One of our main contributors (who happens to be British Muslim) had the following to say.

It seems a little curious that the apparently all the members of what was apparently a fairly mainstream society have been put on a US watch list. Its difficult enough getting through US border control at the best of times, never mind having your name potentially put on a list of potential terror suspects! I guess things need to be kept in perspective, but it does seem a little odd.

UCL were reported to say that no details other than the student names and their email addresses had been passed on. Their student Union said the following.

The police asked the student union to provide details of members of the UCL Islamic Society and the Royal Free and UCL Medical Islamic Society between 2005 and 2008. The union provided the names and email addresses of student members only.

Another contributor to medical educator had the following thoughts…

We certainly won’t be spamming any of our customers with junk or sending out any other sort of unsolicited mail. I can’t help but wonder what sort of spam you might get from the CIA. Could be quite fun really. They are now off our list of potential sponsors for the coming year…

Read to read the whole article here from the Independent, and commented on elsewhere in British Newspapers.We’d be interested in any comments from medical students in the UK or abroad about this.

Medical Educator promises not to pass on your email addresses to other companies/ organisations or third parties, there’s no special box to tick, we just wont do it. This includes the CIA, unless they make us!

Its interesting to find many of the images and descriptions are still relevant today, although some of the descriptions are a little ‘brutal’. To the right you can see handwritten notes by a student along with an image describing the excision of a portion of a rib.

We have concluded 3 things.

1. Medical students revision notes were as illegible 00 years ago as they are today. We can’t decipher much of the revision notes shown here (answers on a postcard). There was one bit that we could read that started with Oh-Oh Oh To Touch And… We haven’t printed the rest out of common decency.
2. Writing in flowing fountain pen certainly adds to the drama of revision notes.
3. Although the 1910 book is of exceptional quality and detail, we reccomend using some of the more up to date texts available. Some of our colleagues have even suggested searching the internet, but we’re not too sure about this and prefer to stick to books!

Thanks to Ms K for the donation of the text, we hope to publish some other relevant diagrams in coming months. William Wheeler died in 1943. A telling comment from his obituary in the BMJ from the same year follows:

He was not only a brilliant operating surgeon, a clinician of much wisdom, and an authoritative writer on surgery, but
a man with a great capacity for friendship.

The overall average score of medical students on MedicalEducator.

The following weeks will represent the culmination of years of hard work by medical students over the past 1-5 years. Revision patterns have been changing and increasingly medical students are approaching final examinations preparing for them using web based MCQ, OSCE and video guides. For the first time, resources like podcasts and the like have taken a firm footing in the medical students preparation for final examinations.

One technique of sitting mock written papers has long been popular. Short answer questions, EMQ and MCQ format questions help people to prepare.

To quote one of our contributors:

I always felt more comfortable preparing for any exam, and I mean any, by running through exactly what I should know, first from a theoretical perspective, then from a practical perspective. If that meant filling in multiple choice questions, I got a book on multiple choice questions. It was what it was.

Maybe you’d like the opportunity to measure yourself against other medical students across the UK or

The average mark in one of our mock final examinations, which was added to the site in April 09.

across the world. A good example of this is our *(tough) mock medical finals paper. This is designed for students sitting year 1, year 2, year 3 year 4 or final examinations, which have a clinical component.

The average for this exam is 49.6%. Tough. But will it help you learn? A comment from a subscriber:

You keep doing questions where a principle that you didn’t understand is explained in the answer. Thats the value of them.

Overall this is a stressful time for medical students, on behalf of the Medical Educator team, good luck in those examinations.

These are particularly helpful for referencing evidence based medicine.

AAN: American Academy of Neurology guidelines

AACE: American association of Clinical Endocrinologists with guidelines here

BAD: British association of dermatologists with guidelines here

BOA: British Association of Orthopaedics with guidelines here

British Society of Immunology

BSR: British Society of Rheumatology, clinical guidelines here

British Toxicological Society

BTS: British Thoracic Society, clinical guidelines here

EAU: European Association of Urology guidelines here

ESC European Society of Cardiology: nice source for cardiovascular guidelines list here

Fitness to Drive: British Driving and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) downloadable PDF ‘at a glance’ guide on fitness to drive

RCOG Royal College of obstetrics and gynaecology guidelines here

The Renal Association. source for chronic kidney disease and eGFR guidelines here