I’ve had several readers inquire about what a normal first year medical student’s schedule looks like. Though this varies from institution to institution, here’s the breakdown of my first block (six weeks) at Baylor Med.

Monday

Lecture 1: 8:00 AM – 8:50 (20 minute break)
Lecture 2: 9:10 to 10:00 (10 minute break)
Lecture 3: 10:10 to 11:00 (10 minute break)
Lecture 4: 11:10 to 12:00 (10 minute break)
Medicine and Management (elective): 12:10 to 1:00 PM

Tuesday

Lecture 1: 8:00 AM – 8:50 (20 minute break)
Lecture 2: 9:10 to 10:00 (10 minute break)
Gross anatomy lab: 10:10 to 12:00
Integrated problem solving (IPS): 1:00 to ~3:00 (depends on when we finish)

Wednesday

Lecture 1: 8:00 AM – 8:50 (20 minute break)
Lecture 2: 9:10 to 10:00 (10 minute break)
Lecture 3: 10:10 to 11:00 (10 minute break)
Lecture 4: 11:10 to 12:00 (10 minute break)
Medicine and Management (elective): 12:10 to 1:00
Patient, Physician, and Society (PPS): 1:30 to ~3:00 PM

Every other Wednesday, instead of attending PPS, students visit their preceptor and to practice what we learned the week before.

Thursday

Lecture 1: 8:00 AM – 8:50 (20 minute break)
Lecture 2: 9:10 to 10:00 (10 minute break)
Lecture 3: 10:10 to 11:00 (10 minute break)
Lecture 4: 11:10 to 12:00

Friday

Lecture 1: 8:00 AM – 8:50 (20 minute break)
Lecture 2: 9:10 to 10:00 (10 minute break)
Histology lab: 10:10 to 12:00

Compared to other medical schools, I find the class schedule at BCM to be extremely student-friendly. There’s plenty of time (sometimes… a little too much time) to pursue hobbies and other things outside of medicine. Leave a comment with any questions!

After finishing the upper extremity, I was starting to feel pretty good! With all the muscles, bones, nerves, arteries, etc. that we’ve studied… how much more could really be left? As a rule of thumb – never doubt the complexity of the human body. Read more  

The next time you move your hand, keep in mind that there are more muscles and ligaments and tendons and vessels involved than… well… I know at the moment. It’s amazing! For a structure as thin as the hand, there are so many tissues packed into it. We often take the range of motion of our hands for granted, but there are a lot of structure-function relationships at work, many of which we discovered during our dissection yesterday. Read more  

I ordered my stethoscope from Stethoscopes.com on July 6th, and it finally got delivered this evening. I now have my first official “doctor tool.” I’m just a bit discouraged that I won’t be using it for over a month. Read more  

Grand Rounds are essentially conferences in which an individual presents a medical problem as well as relevant treatments to a group of doctors, residents, medical students, nurses, etc. Friday morning, I attended my first Grand Rounds meeting at the Baylor Clinic dealing with orthopedic surgery. Read more