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.

Alas Pareto; I Did Not Know Him

www.emergencyone.com.au

I will start off by saying I have never read Pareto's work, nor for that matter have I read Hamlet. That is first and foremost because applying The Pareto Principle is vital to the study of medicine (and thus justifies not bothering to read it.....I'll explain the paradox).

In it's simplest form, Pareto's Priciple states that 80% of output is derived from 20% of input; in otherwords, 20% of your hard work will accomplish 80% of your desired outcomes. This principle is discussed in just about every popular work on achievement and self-help in modern times. It's also the reason that I've never bothered to read the rest of Paretto's work as yet; 80% of the benefit derived from this principle can be derived just from the words above (considerably less than 20% of the thesis). Reading any more than this will have exponentially diminishing returns and increasing effort expenditure in my goal of the practice of medicine.

If you've read this far and are wondering from whence I acquired my stash, allow me to elaborate further. Pay attention to your work place and job: put yourself in your bosses shoes and ask 'What makes this business profitable/effective?'. Next ask yourself, 'What do I do that contributes to that profit/effectiveness'. If you think hard about it, it's likely that only 2 hours of your work day ACTUALLY accomplishes anything that's truly useful for the business. Now turn your mind to your undergraduate studies and the last exam you studied for. Think about how much you've studied that was 1-) Not applicable to what you now practice and 2-) Never assessed in any exam. Now think about how much time you wasted fretting over it......sigh. (I got an HD for my paper on embodiment....it has yet to help me in the practice of nursing or medicine)

One of the reasons that I seemed to do relatively well in my medical school exams was the recognition of this principle. When faced with Harrisons, Guyton, Boron, Rang and Dales and Robbins (enough books to break the sturdiest spine!) for the upcoming cardiology exam, I knew fully well that the male reproductive system would play a small role in my preparation, ergot I ommited it. I then continued this principle of hacking and culling study material until I distilled only what was LIKELY to be in the exam. I then studied this material extensively. When it comes to exams, it's far better to know intimately the 10% of the text book that is examinable rather than to know poorly all of the text book where 90% of it will not be examined.

That is not to say for a second that I don't condone reading extensively and exhaustively! After all, medical school will train you to learn for the rest of your life. But consider this:
-The purpose of medical school is to educate, the goal is to become educated (AKA read hard).
-The purpose of exams is to to detroy one's soul, the goal is to pass them first time (AKA read smart).

The GAMSAT is no different. 20% of what your efforts will be responsible for 80% of your achievement on exam day. So when you're compiling exhaustive lists of reading material and gruelling study regimes that last 6 months and cannot reasonably be followed, I implore you to work smarter, not harder. Don't destroy your soul over the GAMSAT, your super-human efforts will be poor consolation if you don't get the score you were after.

Rather, look at your study program, then look at the ACER question set: work out what 20% of your program is going to improve your performance (for me it was a select few chapters of text book and problem solving activities combined with perfecting EXCELLENT exam technique). Once you've identified that 20%, do MORE of it. This won't ever achieve 100% efficieny, but it will get you closer than you were before. In the GAMSAT, this WILL improve your (score even if that only brings your score from a 30 to a 40).

Remeber the GAMSAT exists primarily as a discriminant tool. Your goal is to get INTO medical school. The GAMSAT's goal is to keep 80% of you out. Hence all of your preparation needs to be directed towards studying the EXAM and not to studying SCIENCE in general.

So good luck to y'all! Feel free to check out our book Reasoning for the GAMSAT here. It's available for purchase as an eBook for $9.95 AUD. Also, feel free to email me about any GAMSAT topics you'd like me to cover on this blog or future eBooks and I'll be more than happy to help out!

Bye folks!

www.emergencyone.com.au

Can You Make Yourself Smarter?

www.emergencyone.com.au

This article from The New York Times was emailed to me by one of our customers.

Incidentally, he was the highest scoring out of our cohort and one of the highest in the country. I loved the article because it basically encapsulates (and far more eloquently than I could've) what the EmergencyOne course is about.

Have a read, it's well worth it. Fluid Intelligence, it's the way of the future people :) PS; after launching our book, we've had an overwhelming 300 or so page views, 16 downloads of the preview and 0 purchases :) So after a massive man tantrum, we're having an early bird special and reducing the price to $9.95. Be brave and be the first person to download it.....how else will it get pirated on all the forums??

DOWNLOAD IT HERE

EmergencyOne Book Launch

www.emergencyone.com.au

Reasoning for the GAMSAT

It is with great pride that we'd like to announce the first publication of EmergencyOne's book; Reasoning for the GAMSAT.

This is a unique handbook about intelligence, reasoning and problem solving as it pertains to the GAMSAT. It's an easy reading guide to this challenging and often elusive exam and is complete with fully worked-through ACER questions and an in depth reading list for preparation.

You can view a free preview here and download the full book here for $29.95. We hope to have the book available as an Ebook via several online vendors shortly.

Happy reading!

BUY THE BOOK NOW

GAMSAT Lecture Series and Interview Preparation

www.emergencyone.com.au

It is with great pride that EmergencyOne would like to announce the creation of two new course series for GAMSAT preparation:

The GAMSAT Lecture Series (2 Hours, $75): Consisting of three stand alone 2 hour sessions focusing on Sections I, II & III. They will be run twice each year, each time covering something different. They are short, to the point and cost effective. The idea being to come to as many or few as you'd like in order to help develop your own strengths and weaknesses as you see them.

We noted with great interest that many candidates perform well in one or two sections but underperform in the others. Another piece of consistent feedback is that our customers also wanted more time to practice questions under the guidance of people who had sat and passed the exam.

The Lecture Series was developed with this feedback in mind. Each 2 hour session will consist of a 1 hour lecture discussing the nature of the section, recurring themes and how to answer the questions effectively and efficiently. This will be followed by a 1 hour small group work session where you will have the opportunity to practice questions under the guidance of a doctor or medical student who has passed the GAMSAT. You will also have the opportunity to meet and learn from your peers who will sit with you on test day. This is also a great opportunity to meet others to form private study groups if desired.

They GAMSAT Lecture Series will run on Friday the 6th, 13th and 20th of September 2012 and again early next year.


Blitz the Interview (3-4 Hours, $190): A novel approach to interview preparation. Being doctors and medical students, we have all been through the terror of the interview both in South Australia and other states. We have collectively passed and failed at some point or another. We know what the interview is testing, what works and what doesn't.

The medical school interview is unlike any other interview you'll ever sit and you won't know exactly what to expect until your turn comes. Candidates are ushered into secluded rooms, made to complete baffling puzzles and then made to answer unanswerable questions. There are also the occasional horror stories of the interview panel playing Good Cop Bad Cop and starting arguments between the candidates and each other. (I was made to wait in the corridor after my interview for 20 minutes....it turns out they just forgot I was there....but I genuinely thought it was all part of the act....ie; can he follow instructions?).

With this is mind, we've compiled the tales of countless medical students to give our customers are realistic glimpse of what they will face on interview day. This 3-4 hour session will be comprised of 1 hour of lectures, 1 hour of small group interview practice and 1 hour of actual formal mockup interview consisting of problem solving, ethical dilemas and a 3 person interview panel. Our goal is to give you as close a taste of what to expect on the day as possible.

The Blitz the Interview course will run on Saturday 14th of September 2012, approximately 2 weeks after offers to interview are released.

As always, we'd like to thank our customers for their unwavering support. I'd also like to give a shoutout to Josh for designing our spiffy new logo! Congrats to all of the candidates who aced this year, good luck with your interview preparations. For those of you who didn't get to where you wanted or who are sitting for the first time in 2013, good luck. I can put my hand on my heart and tell you that the blood, sweat and tears are all worth it if it's what you truly want (though I won't necessarily endorse that view at 3am!)

Cheers
David

www.emergencyone.com.au