In July, 70 Year 12 students visited BSMS for a four-day, three-night summer school. These students are participants on the BrightMed and BrightIdeas programmes – activities designed to support young people from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in Higher Education on their journey to studying medicine. We sat down with three former BrightMed students, Oli, Rabiah, and Enya, who all now study at BSMS and asked them a few questions about their experiences on the programme.
From left to right: Oli, Rabiah and Enya
Could you please introduce yourselves?
Rabiah (R) – Hello, I’m Rabiah and I’m a fourth year, just finished fourth year.
Oli (O) – I’m Oli, I’m also a fourth year, just finished it.
Enya (E) – I’m Enya and I’ve just finished first year.
When did you join the BrightMed programme?
R – I joined BrightMed in Year 9.
O – Also, Year 9.
E – Same!
Why did you join BrightMed?
R – For me it was accidental. I was in a science lesson and the teachers were like, ‘there’s this programme for anyone who wants to be a doctor, do you want to have a look at it and apply?’ So that’s how I got to know about it.
O – Yeah mine was a similar situation. I’d always quite liked the idea of medicine, and then this thing was mentioned in the last five minutes of a science lesson. Sort of got involved and then tried to get some of my friends to come along, and it sort of snowballed from there.
E – Similar, because Oli and I went to the same school, so at the end of one of our science lessons they gave a form to everyone in top set. I didn’t actually want to do medicine at that point, I was completely set on being an Olympic swimmer, and then I was like, it’s a really good opportunity, don’t say no to anything. So I decided to sign up and then when I got here I decided that it was what I wanted to do.
What was your favourite part about the BrightMed programme?
O – My crowning moment was the Design a Drug session. So I was with my friend and we were doing beta blockers, and we called it the BBC drug because it was for old people, and if you watched BBC News like old people did then it would remind you to take the drug. And that was probably the most innovative thing that I’ve done then, and since. That was probably one of my proudest moments of BrightMed, but I think in terms of the most enjoyable it would have to be the Summer School. Living the university life for four days, a nice little taster, doing the dissection stuff to a greater degree than you’d be able to do in a biology class was by far and away the best thing.
R – I actually really enjoyed doing the poster presentation with my group, because we had a lot of fun making it. We used to meet up outside of BrightMed to make sure that we’d get it done, because obviously everyone was relatively close by, so I think I made some good friends through that. And even presenting it wasn’t too scary, it was actually quite fun.
E – I remember a lot of the lectures that we had earlier on by the Student Mentors. I remember that there was one and they were teaching us about immunology, and he was just really into Lord of the Rings, and had done loads of Lord of the Rings references, so there were like the walls of defence and that’s like your skin and your immunity, and had really linked everything together, and I thought that was really cool. I really enjoyed anything anatomy related, so the pathway through the heart where they taped the heart out on the floor and you walk through it, that was one of my favourite sessions.
Did BrightMed help you in your application to medicine?
R – It helped me massively, I think I talked a lot about BrightMed and the skills I gained from it, because I think a lot of the tasks you do as part of BrightMed you actually do develop a lot of presentation skills, teamwork, having to make a poster, working with other people, and communicating. I think honestly, every skill you use in medicine we got to somehow use throughout the programme. So I used a lot of that in examples in my personal statement and talked about it at interview.
O – I’m certain that it’s the main and only reason that I got into medical school, I think mostly because of the interview. I was doing the IB, so I had predicted grades based off French and English, which I wasn’t very good at, so I knew that I would struggle to get in based on grades, so I felt that if I got to an interview stage then I would be fine because I could rely on the knowledge that I had, the experience that I had, than any other med student because of the practice that we’d had on BrightMed.
E – It was the same with me where, my grades were necessarily the best on paper, but the interview practice we did on BrightMed, I think we all remember the role play that we had to do, but when I then turned up to a med school interview where I wasn’t expecting three out of five of the stations to be role plays I just completely took it in my stride. For me it’s the only reason I gained interest in medicine, the only thing that gave me the confidence in myself to do medicine, I’ve not got anyone in my family that’s even remotely linked to medicine, so I couldn’t really ask anyone else for advice. Because I didn’t get the grades at A-Level I felt completely lost, but then I came back and talked to Sam [a former member of the BrightMed team] and he literally sat down with me for an hour and went through every single alternative option with me, and I can’t imagine getting that level of support from anywhere else. No-one else thought I could do it other than the people at BrightMed, so having that sort of support, for me it’s the only reason I’m here.
Has BrightMed helped in your studies as a medical student?
R – Big time, one hundred per cent. Because we have to do a poster in second year, so it helped me massively that we’d done one on BrightMed. Presenting as well, because at school you don’t do a lot of presentations, so to present and speak in front of people and answer questions, I think that helped a lot. Just generally meeting new people, because in school you all come into Year 7 together and you stay in your form and you go through school that way. I think coming to the medical school on BrightMed forces you to talk to lots of different new people from all over the place and I think that’s a good introduction to what uni is going to be like. So when you start uni it’s not as scary.
O – I’d have to agree with all of that. I think the undergraduate lectures we get on the BrightMed Saturday sessions, in particular the cardiovascular one, were the same as some of the ones we got in first year. So It made it so much less daunting actually overcoming that, because I could be like ‘I’ve seen this before, I just need to revisit it,’ and it puts you in the frame of mind that you’ve already dome some of this stuff so you really can do it and takes away that element of self-doubt.
E – I always thought they were lying to us when they said that it was undergraduate level, and then having just done first year, there are some literally identical lectures sometimes covering the exact same concepts. The poster presentation for me has been hugely helpful. I’ve got to med school and within your first month you have to do a presentation, you then get assessed on it throughout, and it’s just not a big deal anymore because if I could do it during BrightMed then I can definitely do it now.
O – It’s also so important because you think presentations are just standing in front of a PowerPoint, but when you’re on the wards you are presenting constantly. Every patient you are presenting that patient to someone senior. You probably present as much as you speak to a patient, so learning that skill, as early as we did in BrightMed is incredibly important.
Was BrightMed beneficial in learning any non-academic skills?
R – It definitely makes you more open to talking to people. I was quite shy, quite quiet at school and at A-Level, but BrightMed makes you a lot more confident as a person because you’ve got to talk to people, you’ve got to do all that sort of stuff. So I think it’s really helped me over the years to really develop that.
O – Having the Summer School and a little taste of what life is like on campus made the whole experience a lot less daunting, and it meant that I wasn’t too worried. I wasn’t too concerned about the move because I’d spent so much time here, so I felt quite comfortable.
R – I think coming here often as well made the medical school building a lot less daunting. So when we joined in first year, it’s always quite scary because it’s the medical school and you have older years walking around and it can be quite intimidating, but I think coming here so often meant I was comfortable in the environment and it made it a lot easier.
E – I think for me it was a big confidence booster and it was really nice to have that support system, and you make a lot of contacts. We were all in the same year of BrightMed, even though we’re now in different year groups, and I’ve been in contact with some of my Student Mentors who supported me on the programme. You learn how to network quite early on and medical students become a lot less daunting.
What piece of advice would you give to an aspiring medical student in Years 9 – 12?
R – Be confident and go for it. Try your hardest. At my college there were a lot of people who told it me it was very competitive and that maybe I should consider something else, but I think that if you believe that you can do it and you work hard, giving it a shot is all that matters. Also, say yes to as many opportunities as you can!
O – I’ve always approached med school as ‘as long as I’ve done everything I could possibly do, it doesn’t matter.’ I could be the worst in the year, but if I’ve done everything I possibly could to achieve what I want to, and then I don’t, it doesn’t matter because I’ve given it my all. Once you’ve decided that you want to be involved in medicine, just doing little things, little and often, and try to make the most out of every opportunity as early as possible by the end of it you won’t be disappointed. It’s incredibly hard to get into, and you shouldn’t be disappointed if you don’t, but if you make every choice that you think is right to help you get there, at the end of the day you’ve given it your best shot and that’s all that you can do.
E – Please relax. Please chill out. I have never been as stressed as when I was applying to medical school. I had barriers at every stage, didn’t get the grades at A-Level, had to redo it, didn’t get the grades, took years out, did an access course. And I had other life stuff going on that I wish I’d paid more attention to because it would have worked out in the end and instead I was stressing about academics. Please take some time for yourself and relax, because if this is what you want to do there is always another route in.
Find out more about BrightMed here >