Communication 2016
A Guide to Successful Study
Studying medicine is very hard and therefore severely demands that you have a strong determination to study, attend lectures and discussions as scheduled, read learning
materials diligently and critically, and execute your assignments properly and on time. Although studying manner differs from one individual student to the other, there are things
that have much in common to achieve success.
Here are some general “tips” for you to comply in order to reach success in your studies at this Faculty, including the Block Medical Communication.
1. Keep your enthusiasm high for your tasks
Your high scores you were able to obtain at High School that enabled you to enrol to this Faculty of Medicine tell that basically you have the basic potential to reach
success in your present studies. Different from the school study, however, at university you are faced with more complex work, more wide and critical reading,
and you must focus on issues in a more detailed and searching way. This means you should be able to manage yourself and your time wisely. Being a last
minute crammer for lectures and assignments is a serious disadvantage and reflects poor self-motivation.
2. Increase your proficiency in reading, writing and speaking
You are given a great deal of reading material, so you have to be selective with which to read in-depth or superficially, know which is important and which is not, see
beyond the details to the underlying principles, pay attention to similarities and differences, to note exceptions to general rules, to understand cause and effect
relationships, tie in what you are reading with what you already know, etc. Similarly, you have to keep-up your writing and speaking ability to such a level required for
university studies in Bahasa Indonesia andor in English. It is for all these purposes that this Faculty includes Academic Reading, Critical Thinking, Speaking in
Conferences, and Scientific Writing courses in this Block and in a few other blocks. There are also both General English and Medical English courses offered by this
Faculty. You must remember that reading, writing and speaking are three main elements of communication skills of great importance in almost all
professions, including medicine in particular. So why not make the best out of these courses
3. Have flexibility in thinking and learning
As a medical student, you are dealing with large bodies of information with which you gradually have to become familiar. In our medical school curriculum system, the
first seven semesters are devoted to integrated learning of basic biomedical and clinical sciences, while the later five semesters are concentrated more on clinical
studies with real patients. Generally, the teaching-learning activities of the early seven semesters consist of lectures, discussions on specific learning tasks or
problems, and in some topics simulationsrole-plays. Since early in your studies, you are introduced to the relation of biomedical knowledge to their clinical implications. In
some of the learning tasks or model cases in the earlier semesters, you may not yet familiar with certain terms regarding diseases or other clinical disorders mentioned in
the taskssimulated cases. Each lecture takes only one hour for a topic, in which the lecturer explains more about concepts and principles rather than on details of factual
information. In consequence, therefore, it is your responsibility to find out explanation to unknown terms or diseases and you have to read more extensively to get more
information from your reading resources. In fact, unlimited amount of information is in existence in the library and on the internet about almost anything. Therefore, the
Udayana University Faculty of Medicine, DME
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Communication 2016
question lies not on where to find the information, but on whether or not you are willing to find it. So, make the best use of the library and Internet available in
this School.
4. Ability to work by yourself