Thousands of medical students sat the situational judgement test earlier this year, their results critical to which deanery they would end up in. However an error with the marking meant that some of them had their resulting allocations withdrawn, and were left in limbo whilst their papers were re-marked.

In this podcast, student editor Isobel Weinberg talks to Neil Chanchlani, final year medical student, about how the fiasco affected him, and Derek Gallen, national director, UK Foundation Programme Office, about what went wrong.

See also:

Foundation allocation of 148 students is changed in wake of scanning error http://bit.ly/ZzRCs9

Foundation allocation error affects thousands of medical students http://bit.ly/12mRaui

Thousands of medical students in “unacceptable” situation after foundation school allocation error http://bit.ly/Y493vw

Doctor’s pensions are currently front page news. With the changes being debated, what can the medics of tomorrow expect in their bank accounts both before and after retiring? Will it still be worth undertaking all those years of training?

Henry Murphy, BMJ Clegg scholar, discusses the issues with Tom Dolphin, chair of the BMA Junior Doctors Committee.

Many would-be medics start training at around age 17, and from then on the path to qualification and beyond is structured. But if medical school is giving you cold feet, what are the alternatives?

Journalist Reecca Ghani talks to three doctors who left medicine and forged successful careers elsewhere about what made them take the leap, and what advice they’d offer others considering doing so.

Vivian Wijaya is a full-time manga artist.

Gary Crotaz is founder and director of Articulate Consulting Ltd.

Shirani Rajapaksa is a prinicipal clinical consultant at Serco Health.

In this clinical case, Alex Romain is taken through the examination of a patient after GP referral for shortness of breath and tiredness by Sandeep Ghandi, from the Medway Maritime Hospital in Kent.

The case is split into 3 sections, examination, history and treatment.

To help with your diagnosis we’ve provided an ECG http://bit.ly/159GNRL, an x-ray http://bit.ly/11XDsPK, and a spreadsheet of blood-test results http://bit.ly/YmAyqT.

In this clinical case, Alex Romain is taken through the examination of a patient after GP referral for shortness of breath and tiredness by Sandeep Ghandi, from the Medway Maritime Hospital in Kent.

The case is split into 3 sections, examination, history and treatment.

To help with your diagnosis we’ve provided an ECG http://bit.ly/159GNRL, an x-ray http://bit.ly/11XDsPK, and a spreadsheet of blood-test results http://bit.ly/YmAyqT.

In this clinical case, Alex Romain is taken through the examination of a patient after GP referral for shortness of breath and tiredness by Sandeep Ghandi, from the Medway Maritime Hospital in Kent.

The case is split into 3 sections, examination, history and treatment.

To help with your diagnosis we’ve provided an ECG http://bit.ly/159GNRL, an x-ray http://bit.ly/11XDsPK, and a spreadsheet of blood-test results http://bit.ly/YmAyqT.

You know those teaching sessions where you suddenly understand a subject, where everything crystallises and you start to think that maybe medicine isn’t actually all that hard? With these podcasts we aim to replicate that experience, with the added bonus that you can listen as many times as you like.

In this episode, John Rees fron Kings College London teaches Alex Romain about a young man who is short of breath.

See also:

Download an image of the x-ray image mentioned in the podcast http://bit.ly/159GExR

Final year student at UCL, Neil Graham, talks to Julian Sheather, ethics manager at the BMA; Lorraine Noble, senior lecturer in clinical skills at University College London; and Anthony Costello, director of the University College London Centre for International Health and Development at the Institute of Child Health

They discuss the ethical problems that may arise when undertaking a placement in a resource poor setting. We focus on a fictional scenario with Danny, a medical student who has got a placement in a hospital in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Medical student’s spend years training to become registered doctors, but throughout that time there is always the potential for a medical emergency to occur outside the clinical setting and often without warning.

In this second student BMJ podcast we’ll hear from 3 people who have been first on scene: Benjamin Waterhouse, a medical student at Leeds University; Roger Allen, a thoracic surgeon from Brisbane Australia; and Peter Holden, an immediate care medic who also works for the BMA.