JSMBS Unofficial Handbook

Student-Faculty Communication

Most  of  the  faculty  members are  very  open  to  talking  with  students  outside  of  class.  Any  student  can  make appointments during office hours. Tutoring sessions are available for extra help, and some professors will hold review sessions before their exams. Most professors welcome feedback from students and are genuinely interested in students’ ideas for improving the courses.   Make sure to take the time to fill out the evaluations at the end of each course.  Student feedback has played a role in fine-tuning and improving the new curriculum. For issues you can also contact your class reps. 

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Code of Professional Conduct
Recognizing the need to embrace and actively support the timeless ethics and values associated with the medical community, the Code of Professional Conduct for UB medical students was developed during the 1999-
2000 academic year and ratified by all current students in the spring of 2000.  With the ratification of the Code came the organization of the Professional Conduct Committee (PCC). The PCC now consists of three student representatives from each class and three faculty members. All students entering since 2000 have agreed to abide by the contents of the Code as a condition of their matriculation.

The PCC’s primary goal is to help all students develop professional ethics that encourage honesty and
integrity in themselves, in their peers, and in medicine as a discipline. As such, educational activities are a priority.
Necessarily, the committee also serves as a resource for correcting breaches of conduct. In these cases, the committee favors resolutions that promote professional development to those that are only punitive. Guidelines are available to help students who have encountered potential misconduct or students who have been brought up on official charges.

We encourage all students to become familiar with Code, as it provides a reminder to all of us that we have
entered a profession in which we have the power to affect the lives of many - a power that must be treasured,
respected, and never abused. Visit the PCC’s website at http://wings.buffalo.edu/smbs/ome/PCC/.
 

On Studying

I can remember my freshman orientation at undergrad, when I was bored and decided to go to a lecture about study habits. My father, a college professor, had always told me that my study habits sucked and that I was going to suffer greatly in college. Of course, breezing through high school didn’t exactly make those words to live by. By the end of my sophomore year, though, I came to the conclusion that fifty years of life experience (twenty-six of them spent teaching college students) did indeed make dear ol’ Dad that much wiser. Anyhow, I’m at this lecture and the woman is rambling on about this and that, and she starts talking about going over one’s notes the day they are taken, studying the material to near-mastery as soon as possible, and avoiding too much procrastination. With my vocabulary not being so great, I had no idea what “procrastination” meant. Afterwards, rather than going to the library and looking it up, I went home and watched TV.

 

You are about to enter an incredibly intense academic experience. You’ll want to take the exams just once and you certainly don’t want to be taking the classes more than once! The point is, there is very little room for trying to figure out what study system works best for you; you’ll have to have some sort of idea before you begin. If you came from a small college where you’ve always had help available and you didn’t fully develop your own study skills, don’t worry too much. This isn’t prison. They won’t beat you if you don’t catch on right away. The faculty is very helpful and, if you ask me, surprisingly patient.

 

As Dr. Ettinger said during one lecture, you must study the material as if you will be tested on it the next
day. This may not be necessary, as you may very well be that rare person in your class who can begin looking at the
material a week before the exam, do very well, and subsequently be labeled as: a) having a photographic memory, or

b) being a witch/warlock. Don’t fret: the admissions committee is capable enough to screen out those with unexplainable supernatural powers. Remember, they knew what they were doing when they chose YOU among thousands to attend this school. Trust that fact, and let it bring you a little bit of extra confidence.

 

In all seriousness, Dr. Ettinger’s advice is good to live by. If you can put in a few hours each weekday into
your studies and that much each weekend day, you’ll have no problems making it through your first year. You’ll
even find that by exam time, you’ll be so completely bored, you’ll want to see a movie the night before the exam.
Similarly, I recommend doing the old exams well before the eve of each exam. You’ll have to get used to the format each course’s exam has to offer. Think of it as a test drive: you know what to expect and you’ll just have to brush up on the details before the real exam.

 

There is no reason why you should be surprised by an exam. You are given the answers before you take the test. Seriously: in college, that never happened. Class notes, for the most part, are like cheat sheets. If you know them, there is no doubt that you will pass the course.

 

If you are set on loading your transcript with “H”s, then be prepared to work your ass off. This doesn’t, and
certainly shouldn’t, come easy. For most of us, the preparation time difference between passing a course and getting
an H can be hideously nonlinear. The advice is the same, though. Study the material to know it cold by the end of
your session.

 

I found that, for a few courses, the best approach was to keep close track of what I didn’t know and talk to the professor about it as soon as possible. As I mentioned, the faculty are very approachable, and you might even find yourself interested in things beyond that for which you are responsible. You will find several professors to be quality educators who actually care about you understanding the material.

 

DON’T GET DISCOURAGED if you just don’t get it. This does not mean that you will be a lousy doctor. The first two years of medical school, despite what the higher-ups want you to believe, are about basic science. You will finish biochemistry knowing more about proteins and enzymes than 95% of practicing docs. And you WILL forget it. That’s not to say, as some might contend, that the basic sciences are useless. If you master them, clinical rotations will make that much more sense. If you don’t get them, then just pass your classes, and hold on until years three and four. In Phase Two, you will begin learning what being a doctor is really about. Remember, you are being taught by PhDs at a school heavily involved in basic science research. That makes our first two years top-heavy with information we may never, ever need to recall (unless you want to get a PhD). Don’t let them lie to you!

 

Keep your head clear, too. If you find that you can’t concentrate anymore, then stop. The best thing to do

before an exam is to get a good night’s sleep. You were crafty enough to get into this damned place, you must also
be smart enough to figure out a question on an exam that initiates absolutely no recall whatsoever...

 

Usually, success in academics is sparked by an initial interest. If you are not at all interested in what you
are studying, then either become interested, or brush up on your memorization skills so that the material all looks vaguely familiar on the exam. Exams are supposed to check your knowledge of the material presented, but you will all find yourselves staring blankly at some exam and muttering, “What the hell is going on?” Chances are, everyone else is as shocked by the professor’s ineptitude for writing exams as you are, and a grotesque curve will soon follow.

 

Here are a few other tips for studying and general success.

1) Don’t ever panic during an exam. Most exams give you ample time per question. If you come across something that you don’t know, take a deep breath and relax. Remember, for every question that you don’t know, there are many other questions that you’ll know cold. Med school exams are not written to trick students. If you’ve studied and done your work well, you’ll be fine when you take the exams.

2) Don’t stress about your grades. You’ve all heard the joke about what one calls the student who graduates last in his medical school class. (In case you haven’t heard the joke, the answer is “M.D.” DUH!) Even for those of you who aspire to be dermatologists, your Step scores, research activities, and clinical performance are much more important than your grades in basic science classes. (Having said that, this editor is not the residency director for the Harvard dermatology program, so take this advice with a grain of salt.) Always strive to be your best, but your best is not always going to be “Honors.” And remember, you’re not at your best when you have to sacrifice your social life and your hobbies for grades. Study hard, but study to learn the material, not just to obtain a letter grade.

3) Be efficient when you study. Don’t spend hours making study guides, unless they really help you. (Hint: make succinct study guides!) Study your notes from class. The notes and lectures ALWAYS contain ALL OF the information that the professors want you to know (unless a professor EXPLICITLY states otherwise). In general, textbooks should be used for reference only. Don’t spend hours searching the Internet for magical study guides, either. The time that you’ll waste looking for resources is most likely better spent studying your class notes. Use online resources that are “tried and true:” ones that have been recommended by classes past. Spend most of your time on the lecture notes, and only use the textbooks and Internet to elucidate concepts that you don’t understand!

4) Be productive if you choose to join study groups. Work with friends and help each other, but spend some time studying alone as well. Study groups are a great way to bounce ideas off of your classmates, but they’re highly inefficient if no one has looked at the material on their own first. Beware of the Farber Annex study rooms. Students go to the rooms to “study” with friends, but they often end up shooting the breeze instead of working. If you’re going to study with others, make sure that you’re being productive for at least some of your time together.

5) Don’t forget to eat, sleep, and have fun! Take breaks. (Hint: exercise! It clears your mind.) Don’t go insane. It’s REALLY not worth it. Study hard, but live your life as well. You are NOT superhuman just because you’re a med student. Don’t become a study machine. We have all heard about the studies showing sleep is needed to commit information to long-term memory, so SLEEP! Your brain needs those zzz’s more than it needs to go through those flashcards a fifteenth time.

 

Digital Lecture Hall Recordings

All of the lectures for your Basic Science classes are digitally recorded. CPM lectures are NOT recorded. All lectures can be accessed through Blackboard via the “Video Access” link on the left side of the screen. Recordings can also be found at mediastream.buffalo.edu.  I am not suggesting that you do not attend class, but if you miss a class from time to time, you will survive.  This is also a good way to review.
 

Challenges to Exam Questions

Generally professors DO NOT allow students to submit written challenges to exam questions that were unfair or ambiguous. However, all exam questions are statistically analyzed. If a critical mass of students does not answer a question correctly, the question will be thrown out, or multiple answers will be accepted. Analysis by stats weeds out poorly written questions quickly and fairly. So fear ye not if thou cannot put forth ye challenge!

 

Where to Study

Many people find it difficult to study at home because of distractions. If you do study at home, remember to reserve your bedroom solely for sleep and other recreational activities. Have a separate area designated for studying. Research shows that mixing your place of sleep with your place of work decreases productivity and makes you lose sleep as anxiety builds; unfortunately, though, most of us don’t have huge apartments. For those of you who can’t study at home, there are many other places where you can fall asleep while studying:

 

• Health Sciences Library: Located right on South Campus, the Health Sciences Library is a hop away. In the basement, you’ll find the media resource room. On the first floor, you’ll find the
  reference desk, current journals, and daily newspapers. On the second floor, there’s a huge
  room with large tables for studying, but the lighting can be dim at times, and it does get loud. On the second floor mezzanine, there are individual cubicles and two rooms that seat six people. Technically, you’re supposed to reserve these rooms downstairs, but I’ve never bothered and haven’t had any trouble. The downside is that the library closes kind of early, especially at the end of the year, when we still have finals, but the rest of the university is finished for the summer. The library is open until midnight Sunday through Thursday. It closes at nine Fridays and Saturdays.

• Law Library: This library is located in O’Brien Hall on the North Campus. It is a popular place for med students. There are many tables, study carrels, and Ethernet connections for laptops. It’s a place where you can go and find a little corner for yourself and not be bothered by anyone. There are also a plethora of vending machines and places to walk around if you need a break from studying. It is extremely quiet, so it is great when you’re studying alone, but it’s not good for group studying. It closes at 11 p.m. Be forewarned: this is the Law Library and not the Medical Library; law students may harbor resentment towards med students and may actively show it.

• North Campus Undergraduate library: It’s loud enough to keep you awake, and it’s open 24 hours.

• Center for the Arts (North Campus): During the day, the spacious atrium on the first floor allows natural sunlight to pour in from the skylights above. For study breaks, check out the two galleries, or walk along the halls in the upper floors to see samples of student artwork.

• Canisius College Library: This college library is located at 2001 Main Street (closer to downtown). It’s a great place to study. The lighting is bright, the library is clean, and it has late hours.   After 4:30 p.m., you can park in the Blue Cross parking ramp without being ticketed.   Canisius Public Safety patrols this area very well (in fact, you can’t drive down West Delavan without seeing one of their cruisers), and they offer 24 hour escorts for anyone who doesn’t feel safe walking alone at night.

• BEB and Farber Annex: The Pathology Labs on the second floor are popular because of their good lighting and chalkboard space. (Other buildings, such as Diefendorf Hall, also have classrooms open late at night.) The Farber Study Annex is located in the old animal research shack in the courtyard of the school. (Follow the pink signs to find the Annex!) The Annex is an area designated for “quiet study;” there’s also some group study rooms if you want to work with friends. The Annex is a great place to go if you can’t deal with any distractions when you study.   With no windows and total silence, it’s like a sensory deprivation chamber.   The Annex can induce stress the evenings before exams because of the tension that mounts when med students get together and gripe, so be forewarned. The Annex can also be a great resource for you if you’re feeling lost, because you are guaranteed to run into other classmates studying the same material.

• Daemen College Library: Students who visit this library offer rave reviews.  It is less than a five minute drive east on Main Street from South Campus.  It was recently remodeled, and has many private study rooms with windows. The building is mostly glass, so the views of Main street and the campus quads can make studying less dreary. The coffee shop on the first floor has gret drinks and food. There also are cafes in walking distance on Main St. (Manhattan Bagel and O3 ). In theory, you need a pass to park in the lot behind the library, so if you are a stickler for rules, park on Main street and the library is the big glass building facing you. If you don’t mind rules so much, park in one of the lots on campus (I have personally never found a security guard to mind). On the weekends, the lots will have plenty of spaces, but during the week you might have to take a lap around the lot.

• Local Businesses: Favorites among med students include Barnes & Noble and Panera Bread.  Both have locations on Niagara Falls Boulevard and Transit Road. Other locations include Starbucks Coffee and the café in Wegmans. Many students frequent the small coffee shops on Elmwood Avenue, such as SPoT Coffee and Coffee Culture.

 

The Computer Center

The computer lab is located on the second floor in 231 Cary Hall, right above the student lounge.   There is
also a Satellite Lab located in 221H Farber Hall.  http://www.smbs.buffalo.edu/omc/.

You will be given a personal allocation on the SMBS network drive known as your “P:\” drive (personal drive); save your files here to your heart’s content! You may also choose to save in the “S:\2016\” (shared class drive), or the “W:\” drive (world drive) if you want other people to have access to your file.   Remote access to the network drives is available via the Citrix “desktop” application. Check out the “S” drive for useful study guides and other helpful files from your classmates.

Print quotas have changed this past year due to the advent of electronic notes: check with the staff in the lab to find out what this year’s quotas are. Print jobs back up very quickly, so be wary, especially when your report needs to be handed in within ten minutes!

The computer center maintains a series of listservs that make it easy to send e-mail to your entire class; in fact, too easy. Several of you will embarrass yourselves sending your entire class one or more of the following: 1) academic difficulties, 2) personal health problems, 3) conflicts with the law, or 4) affairs of the heart.   Please check the distribution before pressing Send.  Please.

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Books

Book buying is a science in its own right, and we will try to provide you with some insight. The school has switched over to electronic notes for all lectures, and in turn the bookstore started selling electronic versions of textbooks. Before you freak out at the cost of “required” textbooks, keep in mind that you will not actually need the books that you’re supposed to buy. Go to class first, and talk to older students to see which books you’ll actually want before you purchase anything. Books are not cheap! You may think another fifty bucks is nothing compared to borrowing twenty grand a year, but by the end of the semester, the extra hundred dollars that you saved means a lot. Check out the library for books that you don’t need often: most of the required texts are available online through clinical key. Talk to your classmates and share.

A really great way to save some money is to buy your books used from second, third, and fourth years. We’ll be happy to sell you our texts at a discount.  Look for emails to your listserv: many students will be eager and willing to sell you their books.  In addition, don’t forget the great on-line booksellers like Amazon: they usually have the books in stock, and you don’t have to carry them home! There is also a used book sale during orientation where you can get many books for $10 or less!

 

Keeping the Faith

(By a member of the Class of 2001. Edited by HH, 2003, and MF, 2004)

If you’ve made it to medical school, then you probably already have faith; in yourself and in your academic abilities. In December 2000, I thought about the 30,000 who had applied and not been accepted. But they picked me, so I must be capable, right? Well... maybe not.

Sometimes, physicians and friends warn you that medical school can “beat you down” or raise doubt in your mind that you shouldn’t even be here. For example, chances are that you’ll find yourself in the middle of an anatomy exam wondering, “What drugs was I on when I signed up for this little adventure?” Much to my surprise and tremendous dismay, I began to have similar feelings in November. As the third block approached, I wasn’t even sure that I still had the aforementioned faith in myself that I had in August. Often, I felt convinced that I had chosen the wrong career path.

Although my first year was a bit more of a challenge than I expected, there was an upside to this “beat-you-
down” phenomenon. With the help of some awesome friends and renewed spirituality, we began to build each other up. The saying “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” will become words to live by. There is a kind of high after getting through exams. Give yourself a little pat on the back - and then return to your humble self as they are getting ready to ream you again.

The challenges found within the first year may cause you to reevaluate the focus of your life. While academic success may come and go, your spiritual existence will always stand by you. As I look back at the first year, thinking about advice for you, here is my humble suggestion: search for some faith that will help you rise above the stresses that you may encounter in medical school. Find the peace that will guide you through the journey of medicine. Of course, there will be bad days, bad exams, difficult clinics, PMS, etc., but through it all, keep the faith. If you really want it, you will make it.

And one more thing: individuality. Remember that each one of us brings to the program a different set of experiences and background preparation, so don’t be surprised that each one of us has a different way of doing things (preparing notes, studying, etc.) or different aspirations and career interests. You will get out of the four years of medical school with what you want to. Don’t feel that you have to get “Honors” in everything if that’s not important to you. Figure out what is important and keep things in perspective

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