Introducing our new Executive Junior Vice President! :)

www.emergencyone.com.au

Hiya folks, recently I had the very great honour of meeting a young man by the name of David Plevin. I met him whilst an intern when he was serving as the clinical pharmacist on the same ward. You can ask any intern what their opinion of clinical pharmacists is and the almost universal response is that they are virtual everyday miracle workers. These wonderful creatures appear with handfuls of charts and point out endless easy solutions of how to get around PBS red-tape, obscure drug interactions, cheaper alternatives and generally happy solutions to life's misery. Imagine your in car GPS could also give you helpful tax advice, remind you to call your mum for her birthday, warn you that the car in front had stopped, book your dinner reservation and park your car while you ran inside....that's what clinical pharmacists are like, they rock!! But I digress!

Add to that the fact that the aforementioned young man is a bit of a smart cookie and just a top it off an all round top bloke! Not too long after that he came along and became one of the first students to attend our Reasoning for the GAMSAT course. He subsequently blew the exam out of the water; much to my dismay he made my score look a little inadequate and made the 99th percentile on his first attempt.....I'm sure he did it with his feet on the desk too the smart ass :)

Hence afterwards when we got to talking, he expressed his beliefs in what we were teaching and how it helped him (though I'm sure more than a little natural talent came into play). Hence I'm honoured to say he has come on board as our Managing Partner and Director of Content (He made me promise not to call him Executive Junior Vice President!). So without further ado, I introduce David Plevin, scientist, pharmacist, medical student, entrepreneur, gentleman and scholar!

1-) What's your background? I've studied both Science (doing Honours in pharmacology) and Pharmacy, and have worked in hospital pharmacy in South Australia for the past 3 years.
 
2-) Where will you study medicine and when? Flinders University, commencing February 2013.
 
3-) What made you want to study medicine? The huge array of career pathways open to a medical graduate, and the opportunities for career advancement. The ability to make a real difference on a day-to-day basis with patients. Having a much wider base of knowledge about health and disease, and being able to do much more professionally - diagnosis, procedures, non-pharmacological treatments. From a pragmatic sense, doctors are the ones with the power in the healthcare system. And importantly, discussions with older pharmacists!
 
4-) What was your biggest fear/worry leading up to the GAMSAT in 2012? Oh, you mean apart from sock puppets? It's a good question... I think I was reasonably - and relatively! -  blasé about the whole thing. (This doesn't mean that I didn't do a lot of study - I did - it just means I was somewhat nonchalant about it all.) I'm pretty sure that this attitude helped me. (like I said, with his feet on the desk!)
 
5-) What did you find most helpful about the EmergencyOne course (or least for that matter?!) The ability to see how you are faring compared to others, and the opportunity to discuss your thoughts and concerns about the GAMSAT and medicine itself!
 
6-) What was you score and percentile rank? My overall score was 76, which lands in the top 1% or so. 
 
7-) What did you find most helpful to prepare for the GAMSAT? Practice questions (ACER and Des O'Neill). I did a lot of revision, especially for physics - doing physics exercises is a good mental work out that you won't necessarily get with chemistry or biology! Having a study partner. Importantly, the epiphany, confirmed by David Hooper, that this is not so much a test of knowledge but a test of problem solving (Naturally our new Directing Partner isn't promoting the competition-slaps forehead-I've only done the Des' interview course and must say, it's good quality, credit where it's due people!)
 
8-) What are you most looking forward to about studying medicine? Getting an exposure to so many different clinical areas, having so many doors wide open in the future, and being able to do things I'd never otherwise get to do!
 
9-) If you could give our readers one piece of advice in preparing for GAMSAT, what would it be? 

Relax! Being less stressed and more detached has two benefits - firstly, you may be more likely to succeed in your endeavours, and secondly, if you don't succeed, you'll be less worried.