Pharmacy, Medical Science and Forensic Biotechnology 2010 (1 Viewer)

Dombrovski

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For all those who are doing Pharmacy (Ph), Medical Science (MS) and Forensic Biotechnology (FB), and the biomed double degree people next year, I thought I would put up some tips about the subjects you will be doing :D

First year common subjects between all courses;
Physiological Sciences 1 & 2
Chemsitry 1A & 1B
Introduction to Microbiology
Scientific Statistics

Other subjects
Ph) Intro Pharmacy
MS+FB+D) Intro Med Science
MS) Maths and Stats in Health Science
FB+D) Applied Legal Studies (Forensics)
Ph+MS-elec) Pharmaceutics 1
MS-elec) Foundations of Information Technology

Of the "other subjects" i also did Intro Med Science. There was another Law subject for Double degree and FB people, but it got changed.

Some hints!
Physiological Sciences 1 & 2
MSE:
Phys1) Don't feel too bad if you don't go very well with this; it may very well be your first uni exam, and you can always pick yourself back up.

Phys2) It may be a good idea to go to the exam review session, as you do renal in the second half of the session, which involves the circulatory system... you want to have that down to make sure you can do your best!

look closely at the objective questions!!

Minitests:
They may be small, but they do add up, really listen in the pracs, and read them before hand so it says in your memory longer!

ESE:
Go to the sample exam sessions! they really help, and you can get some individual attention on stuff which you may not be sure about! Things really start to get put together in this session, and it helps lock in the stuff you may not have been sure about :)

Lectures:
There are topics which are very diagram heavy; it would be a good idea to have the lecture notes for these so you can follow along, and make notes on the actual diagrams as you go!

Overall: You MUST pass phys 1 to do phys 2!! very important as phys 2 is the basis of a lot of second year subjects!

Chemistry 1A & 1B

IF YOU DO NOT HAVE HSC CHEM UNDER YOUR BELT START WORKING ON IT NOW.
Try the Hsc online site, or something similar; just please for the love of god, start working on it. They go through it very very very very very fast!!

Pracs:
Arrive early to the prac time choosing, otherwise it will take an hour and you wont get the prac you want!!
with prac sessions, if you are five minutes late, they will lock the door on you. full stop. make sure you attend.
The Prac exam/assignments! Fail it, fail the subject.
Be careful, and make sure you do everything right in the pracs, and that you write everything down in order to ensure you do the best you can

Assignments:
Start them early, and hack away at them, maybe a couple a day, or all at once, just make sure that it is done.

ESEs:
Don't slack off!

Clickers (you'll see what I mean when you get there):
Like phys minitests, these are an ongoing MCQ assessment task in lectures. small, but the can make the difference between a pass and a fail. They are really good to assess your understanding of the lecture material
If the clicker isnt working coz you've thrown it into your bag, or its been dropped, hold the battery section in, or try sqeezing the sides!

Tutorials:
Go. But if its the difference between you going and you eating for the day, its probably better that you eat :)

Overall: You MUST pass Chem 1A to do Chem 1B!! very important as Chem 1B is the basis of a lot of second year subjects!

Introduction to Microbiology
Minitests
As with Phys, they add up. if there are problems with them, dont whinge. please. just write an orderly email/post and don't angry at the lecturers! this is only a very new subject!

MSE&ESE:
These are meant to be really hard every year, look closely at the objective questions!!

Scientific Statistics
Assignments
Dont copy off each other. you will get zero for the assignment/s if you do.

Prac Exam;
Go to the tuts so you know how to use the computer programs!

ESE
WRITE YOUR OWN NOTES AND MAKE SURE THEY ARE GOOD.
AND DO SAMPLE QUESTIONS.
^difference between finishing and not finishing the 70% exam.
 
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kaaronlf

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Thanks so much :p
By the way, I am going to the B.Pharm in wagga 2010..anyone else?~
 

Dombrovski

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Thats okay :)

If you have any other questions, I am happy to help!
 

Dombrovski

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whats 64/256 and 6.38/7.00 mean?
64/256= my course has 29 subjects, 26 worth 8 points each, and 3 worth 16 points... I've completed 8 of my 8 point subjects (ie finished first year).

I have no idea why they have a point system like that, but oh well.

6.38/7.00= my GPA
 
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kaaronlf

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I'll be doing B. Pharmacy at Wagga in 2010 too :)
Nice to meet you here diana~:jump:

btw, do you know what's orientation date of pharm student?? it's 20th Feb or 22th Feb?? really confused.~~:(
 

Dombrovski

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I'll be doing B. Pharmacy at Wagga in 2010 too :)

Nice to meet you here diana~:jump:

btw, do you know what's orientation date of pharm student?? it's 20th Feb or 22th Feb?? really confused.~~:(</SPAN>
I recommend that you have a tour of the uni if you aren't a Wagga/Orange local (before O-week)....
Having that little bit extra directional capacity is of great benefit to you in O-week, as you can focus more on the fun side as opposed to the "OMFG where the hell is that building :uhoh://:cry://:eek://:(" experience which I know some of the non-locals had... :)
 

diana_a

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Nice to meet you here diana~:jump:

btw, do you know what's orientation date of pharm student?? it's 20th Feb or 22th Feb?? really confused.~~:(
Nice to meet you too!

I'm not too sure when our orientation starts,
I was looking at the orientation program & it says that international students commence with room allocations on Sunday the 21st of February & regular students commence with room allocations on Monday the 22nd of February.
I'm from Wollongong so I might head down on the Saturday for a tour or something.
 

Dombrovski

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Oh! Intro Pharm, you apparently have video conferencing with the Orange students/lecturers, which is supposed to be really really... weird... :spin:
 

diana_a

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Haha, oh dear, that will be an experience!
Do you know when this video conferencing is going to take place?
 

Dombrovski

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Haha, oh dear, that will be an experience!
Do you know when this video conferencing is going to take place?
It gets done in lecture time I think...

there was a bit of a... fight... through the conference system last year, it was meant to be very good entertainment value; those present thoroughly enjoyed themselves... :D

so be on the look out for crazy people!! :spin::jump::hat::jump::spin:

The subject is very sociology/humanity heavy, so you may find it a bit of a bore. The readings are meant to hurt a lot as well... :(
 

diana_a

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It gets done in lecture time I think...

there was a bit of a... fight... through the conference system last year, it was meant to be very good entertainment value; those present thoroughly enjoyed themselves... :D

so be on the look out for crazy people!! :spin::jump::hat::jump::spin:

The subject is very sociology/humanity heavy, so you may find it a bit of a bore. The readings are meant to hurt a lot as well... :(
Fight?
Who knew lectures could be so entertaining haha.
If I completely understand a subject, I'm almost guaranteed to enjoy it regardless of it's workload and content - I sure hope it'll be the same for the above!
 

Dombrovski

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Lol, yeah, when you are in second semester, you'll find the Chem 1B lecturers (Greg and Danny) are epic.

Thats great! I wish I had that ability... :eek:

I really hope you enjoy B.Pharm! :party::music::party: Oh, and enjoy your holidays!
I found that Uni is like a HSC year squeezed into a very short period of time. And you'll have two of them a year but don't panic, if you were able to get the atar for pharm, I'm sure you'll be fine. :)
If you want help during the year with something, just pm me, and I'll help u out :)
 

diana_a

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Thankyou for your advice!
I'll be sure to contact you if need help.
Enjoy the rest of your Holidays :)
 

Dombrovski

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I've been PM'ed a bunch of great questions about Pharmacy and subjects, so I thought I would add them:

Could you tell me more about the course and the workload etc:

I guess a good thing to start off with is that this course will allow you to become a pharmacist as it is covered by The Pharmacy Act (some pharm degrees are actually aimed at research and will not allow you to own a pharmacy or practice as a pharmacist).

The assumed knowledge for this course is 2u Maths, and a combo of Bio, Chem and/or physics. 2u English is also recommended.
The major thing with b.pharm, is that there is pretty much no room for fails. Especially in first year. You will have five subjects in first year which you cannot afford to fail:

Chem 1A (CHM104) (Covers Basic chem, acid/base, titrations, equilibrium, chemical energy, chemical physics)
Chem 1B (CHM107) (Covers organic chem, electro chem, kinetics and thermo chem)
Physiological Sciences 1 (BMS129) (basic anatomy; skin, bones, cells, muscles(be wary), endocrine, neuro)
Physiological Sciences 2 (BMS130) (gastrointestinal, repro, renal, cardio, circulatory, respiratory)

These four are the basis of nearly ALL your other subjects over the other three years of the course

The other subject is Introduction to Pharmacy this subject covers nearly all the other pharm subjects that you will do. It is a key subject, fail it twice and you are kicked out of b.pharm.
The other key subjects for pharm are:
BMS340 Pharmacology
PHM215 Pharmacy Practice 1
PHM231 Pharmaceutics 2
PHM315 Pharmacy Practice 2
PHM401 Professional Practice 1
[Don’t worry about this too much at the moment, you should get a biomedical sciences book during O-week which has a heap of course info in it.

They all flow on from each other (except pharmacology, but you need CHM107 and BMS130 to do that), so in other words, fail one of those subjects and you break your yearly progression. Fail one of them twice and you’re gone.

Time at uni:
Once again, pharm subjects, I have no idea, but I had about 20-24 hours of uni/week in first semester, and about 18 (plus a distance subject) in second. HOWEVER, as the academic calendar has been shortened, you may very well have more time at uni to make up for the two weeks which are being lost due to the changes.

Chemistry 1A involves a 3 hour prac a week, a 1 hr tute, and 3 hrs of lectures.
Chem1B doesn’t have tutes (at wagga, there may be some at orange)
Phys 1&2 has 3 hrs of lectures and a 3 hr prac
Microbiology has 3 hrs of prac, and 2-3 hrs of lectures. The 3rd hour of lecture may become a tute
Statistics has 1 hr of tute and 3 hrs of lectures. Your name is marked off in the tutes (in wagga anyway...), and you will need to know how to use S-plus, the stats program, so I really recommend going.
You will do stats in first semester and micro in second. Unless they’ve changed it around.

Not sure, but:
Pharmaceutics 1 has prac and lectures, and I think it has tutes too
(probably a 3hr:2-3hr:1hr arrangement)
Intro Pharm has lectures and tutes.
(no idea about lengths sorry)

Workload:
Chem has lots of questions for tutes, and they are weekly... but not compulsory =] However, there are pre- and post-prac questions and they are key to you passing the subject. Don’t neglect them as they count towards you final grade!
Physiology has lots and lots and lots and lots of readings. Lots. I didn’t really do them, and I did fine :D Doing a bit of the lab readings/questions gives you an edge in the minitests though
Statistics doesn’t really give homework, but you should be preparing notes for the end of session exam; makes it a lot easier on you in the long run.
Micro may/may not have tutes... but they aren’t very big anyway! Nor compulsory.

How many people actually fail in first year?
This varies quite substantially... it depends on the subjects involved. Your intro pharm subject should really be easy as pie, but don’t get too cocky. Someone at wagga was quite stupid when responding to one of the questions in an assignment:

“In 150 words, write what have you learnt from this passage/question?”

He responded with something along the lines of “nothing, it was worthless”. He failed the subject. And its a key subject. And that fail also pretty much prevents him from entering the honours stream (I’ll get to that later). Just remember that the person marking the exam/assignment may have also written it.

Not that many people fail phys from what I have found... but people have a penchant for failing chem and stats. They are the subjects which require some real homework.

Micro was also a nightmare for fails/low passes. However, that subject incorporated a vast area, from immunology, to wine science, to soil... because of this, a lot of people just went “oh I don’t need to know that for my course” and then they couldn’t answer the 20 marks out of 106 in the exam on that section... and when people do that for two or three sections... fails thrive (for exams anyway, and that was after scaling the exam marks)

Pharmaceutics 1 was meant to be pretty hard, but I didn’t do that subject.

My core group of friends at uni consists of 10 people, 10 people times 4 subjects is 40 grades (first semester)... and there were 4 fails (3 chem and 1 stats). There were additional examinations for Phys and stats, which brings the initial fail rate to 6/40 (this was only three of the people however).

i also hear that the year 12 chem used for pharmacy gets used up very quickly ie. a week or something? is that true?
Sadly enough, it is true, thankfully though, it is kinda spread out... when you start chem, you will go through Avogadro’s Number, moles, stoichiometry in about a week. I know I spent about a month on that at school. It’s a wonder the mature age students can handle it!
If you haven’t memorised them already (which I’m hoping you have) you’ve got to know your cations and anions, and be able to rattle them off... in my opinion anyway!

The thing is, Chem1A and Chem1B are split into different sections, so they gobble parts of HSC chem bit by bit.
Chem1A:
First: moles, stoichiometry, and bonding
Second: Physics stuff (like atomic spectra)
Third: More Bonding, 3d bonding
Fourth: Equilibrium (This gets nasty!)
Fifth: Acid/Base and solubility (also evil)
Chem1B:
First: Organic
Second: Thermo
Third: Electro
Fourth: Kinetics (Which I did not do in HSC at all)
You get an “introduction” to each section, and this pretty entails learning each of your HSC parts and more in three hours or less per section. It goes really really fast.

and also, would you say pharmacy involves plenty of memorising rather than using your brain? lol!
That is a bit of a tough one. I have a really good memory, which clearly is advantageous... but just being able to memorise stuff won’t cut it. All of the subjects need to have a level of memorising, and this will get you through exams, but you will be shot down by questions which require application of theory.

For example, in phys 2, you learn that the kidneys are responsible for producing a hormone called erythropoietin, which stimulates the production of red blood cells. Thats great if you can remember that, but you probably wouldn’t help you if a question was

“You have a diseased kidney, explain possible implications on the circulatory system in regard to its capacity to transport oxygen”

Sure, you’d probably say toxins are building, damaging cells, thus removing the red blood cells, preventing oxygen transport (which IS true), BUT
what they would be getting at is:
Erythropoietin is not being produced in adequate amounts>>Lower levels of RBCs being produced>>lack of haemoglobin>>lack of O2 transport>>Hypoxic tissue

You need to be able to view the body as a whole, not just as separate units.

Also, they throw curve balls in chem, stats and micro, where you may think “we NEVER did this in lectures...” but you probably did, its just worded in a way where you need a higher level of thinking to identify the problem. ESPECIALLY in stats!!

Honours
Pharm has an integrated “honours stream” (ie it fits into the four year program, as opposed to an additional year at the end). You must be doing well in first/second year to be able to enter that stream. Otherwise, you will remain in the “pass stream” which means you will just finish with B.Pharm as opposed to B.Pharm (Hons).
to get to honours, you need at least distinction average yeah?
Straight from the CSU website:
“To transfer into the Honours stream at the beginning of the third year, you must have obtained a Credit average in all first- and second-year subjects. Successful students will be included in a special program of Honours workshops and tutorials in third year and choose a project and potential supervisor during that year.”
 

Doomah

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64/256= my course has 29 subjects, 26 worth 8 points each, and 3 worth 16 points... I've completed 8 of my 8 point subjects (ie finished first year).

I have no idea why they have a point system like that, but oh well.

6.38/7.00= my GPA

nice gpa, what didnt you get a HD in?
 

Dombrovski

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I got credits for Chem1A and Phys 1, and then got a distinction in Phys 2... otherwise...
 

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