Foreign Perspectives

As the Infectious Disease course is the last one for my Life Sciences degree, I thought I’d beef up the amount of dedicated revision time that I had for it.

That means that I’m a full-time student for the next week.

It doesn’t mean that I’ll be doing 12 hours a day revision mind you as my brain tends to run out after a while. The basic game plan is to drop the kids off and head on somewhere quiet where I’ll be able to do several 45-60 minute stretches before lunch, another slot after lunch and one or perhaps two after I pick them up again.

In principle, that should leave me with loads of time to do it all but the problem is that there’s loads to be done. My notes are 30 pages, I’ve another 10 of detailed diagrams, the glossary runs to 50 pages and so does the Q&A. Not to be forgotten is the research question which has oodles of studies though I’ll likely limit myself to 10-20 pages of reading for it. Having said that, I’ll only be skimming the glossary and Q&A so in reality it’s the 40 pages of notes and diagrams plus the 10-20 of the research question which doesn’t sound so bad but every one of them is very information rich.

One other complication is that for the answer to the research question you need to have two diagrams or tables and I’ve not yet seen any doable ones for it.

A long time ago my very first job was working on medical information systems and it’s interesting to see how far along such systems have moved since that time.

The world of electronic health records software these days is all about managing patient care effectively. No more mistakes through unreadable handwriting, fewer problems through prescribing medications that interfere with existing drugs that the patient may be taking and generally more efficient management of the practice. In general terms, a massive improvement in the quality of service that you offer your patients.

Having said that, it is scary to move from paper based systems onto entirely online ones and for that you need consultancy support during the period of changeover. You’ll never regret the move though!

Over the weekend, I managed to complete phase one of my revision for the exam next week. That entailed finishing off the notes for the final book of the course so now it’s onwards to the next stage of the revision.

First up this week is a look at the research question and gathering together the information that I think will be required to answer it. I’m also going to have a look at the three examples of this type of question that I have from the specimen exam paper and the two past papers. I’m not going to look at them in a whole lot of detail though – just enough to get a feel for what kind of questions might come up.

Next up  is a look at the specimen exam paper I think with a view to ensuring that the notes that I have are sufficient to answer the majority of the questions. I say “the majority” rather than all as, although clearly being able to answer all would be better, I’ve not looked at any of the papers yet so I don’t now how viable it is to know everything that might be necessary. In parallel with that I’ll be going over the notes that I have at the moment and adding bits & pieces to them as necessary to answer the questions on the specimen exam and, later, on the two past papers that are available.

Then there’s an assortment of information to glance at which includes the 50 pages of the glossary, an equally chunky FAQ and a number of diagrams on topics that one of the other students produced this year. I’ll probably confine my revision of the case studies to those diagrams as I don’t think I will be able to slot in the time to go over them fully and I don’t think it’s necessary anyway.

After that, it’s some serious going over the notes that I’ve produced over the last month or so in the hope that enough of it will stick to answer ten of the short questions and any required background for the data handling question.

Early days for this, but given the experience of ED209, I plan to start early.

Exloring Psychology (DSE212) formally starts in a couple of weeks but I’ve been reading the texts for a while now in teabreaks and I’m about a month ahead with the reading at the moment. That said, there are also other non-textbook items to look at including the workbook (not too onerous so far), assorted videos (some of which were in the Coursera psych course last year) and a number of audio recordings. In terms of volume of work, it seems less than SK320 but there are six full-size TMAs to be done, albeit with a spare week for each, of which the first is due the first week in November.

I’m hoping to do my ED209 style notes for this as I go along but we’ll see how the time works out with that idea. Tim’s notes aren’t great for DSE212 as they were for an earlier version of the course and he hadn’t really gotten into gear with his note writing then but David’s DSE212 toolkit looks reasonable, if rather large (it runs to around 250 pages!). I’ll be aiming for something in the middle ground.

At the moment, my plan is to run up notes as I get through each chapter as I did for ED209 and produce the overall guide like the ED209 one along with the ED209 PDF style notes.

With the credit squeeze in full force many people are finding it difficult to source short term borrowing when they need it to tide them over to the next paycheck. This is where payday loans come in and, of course, there are more and more of them on offer every day.

In principle they’re fairly simple in that they are:

1. intended to be repaid from your next paycheck (although you can usually roll them over to the one after that);
2. don’t require a credit check;
3. are from around £100 to £1500
4. require you to be in regular employment of at least £1000/month (usually for at least the previous three months);
5. require you to have a normal current account (usually for at least the previous three months); and
6. be over 18

Approval is very fast and even quicker now that online checks can be carried out by the credit company ie no more faxing of documents.

Although payday loan advances are fairly simple, the sheer number of them that are around means that a little guidance is handy. The rules do change and you’ll find that the legislation on these apparently simple loans is quite extensive.

Applying online is easy and quick, but do watch the amount that you’re paying as it can easily pull away from you.