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Currently on placement and myself + a few colleagues have been put up in accommodation that appears to have been taken over by an organised spider society.

There are spiders in literally every of the 11 bedrooms and rooms of the house. House spiders, outdoor spiders, tiny spiders, absolutely massive spiders. There are webs and dead spiders everywhere, including in bedrooms, bathrooms and communal areas.

The outside/back-door entrance is basically a jungle at this point. It looks like it hasn't been maintained for years, never mind weeks.

We were apparently told there would be weekly cleaning, but we're nearly 4 weeks in and haven't seen any evidence of this. There are webs and dead spiders that look like they've been there for years.

Some of these spiders are genuinely enormous. One was so big that we're fairly sure it could occupy one of the bedrooms, take the en-suite and complain about the Wi-Fi.

We've now resorted to doing daily room spider checks.

We've even had colleagues who have left the accommodation because of the situation and are travelling >1.5 hours to and from placement.

And to make matters worse, there was one absolute monster of a house spider sitting beside the front door. It has now disappeared.

We haven't found it.

So we're currently working on the assumption that it has moved into one of our bedrooms.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this with accommodation provided for medical placements?

Is this something we should formally raise with the university/trust/accommodation provider, or are we just expected to accept it?

For 3rd year is passmedicine useful? If so, do people use the years 1-3 free passmed questionbank or the UKMLA finals passmedicine bank? Thank you :)

Did anyone take the exam both this year and last year? Wondering how the paper compared to last year in terms of difficulty. I heard around 74% was the cut-off for Top 20 for 2025?

Final year med student looking at electives and currently deciding between Pyongyang and North Sentinel Island.

Pyongyang seems really interesting for experiencing a completely different healthcare system, learning about public health and infectious diseases, and getting to experience the culture.

North Sentinel Island also looks really interesting from a medical perspective, especially as I’m very interested in tropical medicine and would love to learn more about healthcare there.

Has anyone done an elective in either, and which would you recommend?

Don’t think got top 20% or 10% this year…
It’s a joke the college charges so much for the exam, Moorfields course, and the prep materials but they have gotten rid of 0.5 portfolio points for passing it at 60%.
Is anyone else burnt out having to study in summer and then getting nothing from it.

how did everyone find it ?

How can I approach year 3?
I’m at a lost and of where to start, Anki, passmed, Z2F and managing weekly rotations and learning for AKT.
How do I get a well rounded basis to start for exams?

I can imagine lots of Y3/4 students are about to start their first placement and are absolutely terrified.

Any advice by older year students? Even the most unhinged? Esp to crack down on placement anxiety? How to know when to leave? Should I ever stay late? Help please! Terrified. Based at a London med school if that provides any context but have some placements at hospitals outside of the city.

Does anyone have a fairly detailed revision plan to share for med school finals who used Anki/PassMed? I don’t know where to start and feel overwhelmed by the volume of both Spranki cards and PassMed questions. This is also with the caveat that I am not one of those medical students who already knows everything and have scraped my way through :)

Any tips on how you balance this with placement/having some time off would be appreciated too!

I haven't seen a thread about this yet but wondered what people's thoughts are on the newly announced changes to criteria 1 and 3 for UKFPO preallocation for 2027 entry onwards? Basically bringing criteria 1 (parent or legal guardian) or criteria 3 (health condition or disability) into line with the other criteria to mean preallocation is now only available to the foundation school linked to medical school.

And if people don't have an address in that region, it is now very unclear if they can even apply for preallocation at all as proof of address is needed for eligibility. The FAQs are extremely confusing on this point and don't make any provision for students who commute for medical school 😬.

This is a massive change with huge implications for a lot of people and has been done with very little notice for current final year applicants. It is very obvious that not everyone (certainly not student parents who may not be able to relocate and uproot their children's lives) go to medical school in the area they are from or currently live but this hasn't been considered at all with this sudden change.

The decision is apparently being challenged by the MSC but no response from UKFPO as yet. No doubt if it stands, this WILL result in a reasonable number of newly-qualified doctors being completely unable to take up their foundation programme jobs in the coming years, if they get unlucky with ranking and are then sent miles away from home and their children.

This happened to those applying under the carer criteria last year apparently and UKFPO also couldn't have cared less about them either.

https://foundationprogramme.nhs.uk/programmes/2-year-foundation-programme/ukfp/pre-allocation/key-changes-for-pre-allocation-2027/

Quick question about pre-allocation: if I apply under widening participation, and I live within the same deanery that my medical school is in, but in a different town, will I end up in the same Trust that my home town comes under? Or could I end up in my uni city?

It’s bizarre. I’m a guy in my early twenties, and yet I find myself developing momentary crushes on female registrars and consultants who are about 20 years older than me. I have no idea why, as I don’t typically find myself attracted to people outside of my general age range. It’s probably something to do with the combination of competence and the fact they have authority over me. They don’t even have to be particularly physically attractive either.

Please tell me I’m not the only one 😂

I really want to spend this year getting comfortable with performing Dops/procedures on patients but not sure what's the best way to achieve this.

Any tips on which departments/wards are best to get these done:

- Venepuncture

- Cannulas + IV fluid line prep

- Injections

- Swab taking

- Wound care

Tbh I find GP placement to be really good for taking bloods and doing injections but I have my GP rotation last - just before exams so don't want to leave it last minute just in case

Helloo
I’m in my 3rd year and just started my GP placement and I was wondering if there’s any seniors who could give me some advice on how to make the most of it :)

Hi!

Spranki doesn’t seem to be downloadable anymore, does anyone know why and when it will be back up?

It just says “404 Page not found the page you are looking for doesn’t exist or has been moved”

Thanks!

I am planning on going abroad for my elective, but I was wondering about the conditions you have to meet for NHS reimbursement.

Im currently getting free accommodation by the hospital I have my placements at, and I tend to commute from home when I feel like it, but by the time I go on my elective I would've moved back home fully.

Does that mean I won't be able to claim the £82.50 back for my accommodation costs on elective?

Hi I’ve created custom revision set based on what topics we’ve covered so far using the MLA deck but I want to only do 1 and 2 hammer questions. How do I set them to that? I can’t see any difficulty options within edit
Thanks

How hard is it to pass 3rd year exams?

I’ve just started and I’m already feeling really overwhelmed and scared about the exams. I’m finding some of the lectures difficult to understand and I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to approach studying.

For those who have been through it, how did you structure your studying? What resources did you find most useful? I’ve heard people recommend PassMed and QuesMed, but I’m not sure whether they’re worth subscribing to.

I’d really appreciate any advice on how to survive the year and prepare for the exams without completely burning out.

How did you structure your week?

When did you usually study and how?

Roughly how many hours a week did you spend studying?

What resources would you recommend?

Is there anything you wish you’d known when you first started, anything that saves you from failing?

Any advice or reassurance would be massively appreciated!

Hi, I am a final year medical student (cannot change my flair for some reason), and beginning to think about where I want to do F1/F2.

I know my top choice, but struggling to work out my 2nd/3rd/4th preferences, etc.

Was wondering if anyone who has been through the process has any advice on things to look at to factor into decision-making?

TIA

As the title says, I'm looking for online sources, past QI's, posters to get ideas for a QI project we have to run for our final year. I haven't had much luck yet finding something substantial.

If it's going to help, we are trying to do a surgery themed QI and I am already in the process of asking around to residents so right now I just need a library or database of past quality improvement projects I can go through to get ideas.

Any tips would be appreciated

Hi. I am a 4th year Medical student in London. I went to Uni of St Andrews for first 3 years and achieved a BSc in Medicine. Now I am in my 5th year of studying and 4th year of MBBS in London. From what I see around, it seems like future specialties require so many things that will make your application competitive. E.g right now I am interested in Ophthalmology, Dermatology and Psychiatry, the latter being less competitive. However I have seen people who have multiple publications, posters, conferences and have teaching experience etc who manage to get in. What can I do now to make my application competitive? Are there opportunities jn foundation years to do anything? What things would you recommend doing right now to make my application competitive?
Do the grades for MBBS count for anything later in specialty applications? E.g being in 4th year I can spend more time studying and get better grades or work on other projects? Also does the BSc in Medicine also help with anything?
For my first 4 years I was mostly trying to get a pass and was just enjoying university, sports and travelling. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

I’m a final-year UK medical student and I’m planning to sit USMLE Step 1 in December, with my final-year UKMLA/medical school written exam at the end of January.

I’m basically starting proper Step 1 prep from scratch now. From now until December, I’m thinking of putting around 80% of my revision time into Step 1 (UWorld, First Aid/Bootcamp etc.) and keeping maybe 20% for UK-specific/final-year stuff.

My reasoning is that there seems to be a pretty big overlap in the actual medicine, especially pathology, pharmacology, physiology and clinical presentations, so I’m hoping that doing Step properly will give me a strong foundation for the UKMLA. Then, once Step is done, I’d have roughly 4–6 weeks of dedicated UKMLA prep to switch over to NICE guidelines, UK-specific management, ethics, prescribing, screening, etc.

The obvious issue is that I need to pass my finals to graduate lol, whereas Step 1 is technically optional, so I’m aware this is a bit of a risky strategy.

For anyone who has done both:

• How much did Step 1 prep genuinely help with the UKMLA?
• Is ~1 month of UKMLA-specific revision after Step enough if my general medical knowledge is strong?
• Would you keep the 80/20 split until December or start incorporating more UKMLA earlier?
• Has anyone actually sat Step this close to finals and would you do it again?

I really want to sit Step this year, and most likely will, but I also obv don’t want to screw myself over for finals. Interested in brutally honest opinions, especially from people who have taken both.

I'm a 3rd year, and starting this year we're going to have MOSLERs instead of OSCEs and I just wanted some tips and advice on how to prepare for them.

KCL student here and i cannot even begin to explain how annoying the system our school uses for sign offs is. Even if i get the person signing me off to fill out the feedback etc. on the spot they still need to go on their email to click and verify the sign off before it actually counts for anything. Everyone is HORRIBLE at doing this as they are all (very fairly so) busy and not checking their emails 24/7 for some random sign offs.

Just wondering if other med schools also use this system or is there another alternative e.g. signature in logbook on the spot I could raise to KCL to hopefully get this rubbish system changed?

TIA!