Hello Again,

Thought I would write some more about myself...

I am British-Iranian but, having been born and raised here in the UK, my experience of Iran is limited to two short (2 week) holidays - both were amazing and enlightening; I look forward to hearing from Reza about his experiences as a student.

I commute daily from South London to the East where my medical school is. Lots of students choose to do this (1 in 5 apparently), especially medical students, because of the long course I suppose. I will be moving out from home to live closer to University from next year for the last three years of my course. This is when I will be expected on ward rounds, which can start very early in the morning.

My course is a Problem Based Learning (PBL) based course. PBL is a method where we sit in a group of about 8 people, work on a clinical problem and set ourselves learning objectives. We then return after a few days and feedback to the group on what we have learnt, helping each other to clarify areas of difficulty. It doesn't always work perfectly, but we usually get there in the end (and if we don't, there is a facilitator present to make sure we are doing OK)! This is all supplemented with lectures, practicals, sessions in the IT Lab, Workshops and 'Medicine in Society'.

Medicine in Society is a placement programme where we are assigned to a healthcare team (General Practitioners (GPs) in year 1, other non-hospital care in year 2) and visit them every two weeks - we are expected to observe interactions between patients and healthcare providers as well as understand a bit more about how healthcare works in practice. This year, I have been placed with a community psychiatric team and so far it has been very interesting.

What are your experiences of teaching at medical school Reza? How are you taught there? It would be interesting to see how the teaching is similar and how it is different compared with here. I had a look at your photo-blog and I have to say I was really impressed - the photos are so good and capture quite a lot!

Anyway, that's enough for today - work to do!

Bye and Khoda-hafez,

Payam