What to Wear
For your first year in medical school, you don't need to worry about totally overhauling your wardrobe (although, you can if you'd like). The majority of your time during 1st year will be spent in lecture and small group sessions with 1 day a week interacting with patients (during clinical skills sessions). As a result, most days you are free to dress in your regular clothes. However, on the days where you will be interacting with patients, you will be expected to wear clinical skills attire.
While it's best to wait for the clinical skills introductory lectures each year to know what the course director's do's and don'ts of dress are, here are some basic points that are usually constant in the clinical skills dress code:
- When seeing real, standardized or volunteer patients, students are required to dress in a professional manner (business casual) with a somewhat conservative style.
- Men should wear dress pants and collared shirts.
- Women should wear discreet apparel. Shoulders, cleavage and abdomen should be covered, and remain that way when bending and reaching; short skirts are not permitted.
- Dress shoes (i.e. loafers) are necessary for nearly every clinical encounter; only wear running shoes if you've been told you can (some surgical observerships). Open-toed shoes in clinical areas are prohibited for reasons of safety. Please avoid gym socks.
- Excessively tight clothing should be avoided and underwear should not be visible through clothing.
- Any jewelry worn should be small and discreet.
Textbooks
Don’t buy any textbooks before you start classes! Once you start lectures, you’ll get a better idea of which texts to purchase by how well you understand the material and how heavily the instructors emphasize referencing the resources. You can always buy the texts brand new from the Queen’s Campus Bookstore, but you may want to save some money by checking out cheaper alternatives such as Amazon.
Free texts are another good option: most of the recommended texts are available in the Bracken Health Sciences Library reserve section. Also, check out the gold mine that is the Canadian Medical Association website. With a CMA membership, you have access to a plethora of medical texts, all of which have been converted to an online format. There will be a workshop at the beginning of the year offering you membership to the CMA and showing you how to use this invaluable resource.
Equipment
Long Lab Coat (for anatomy labs) - there will always be lab coats that you can borrow for weekly labs outside of the anatomy lab room. If you have worked in a lab and still have your lucky lab coat, complete with Coomassie Blue stains, save it! However, you don't need to do this - if you want to buy your own lab coat, you can always purchase one at the Campus Bookstore or Phase 2 in Kingston.
Short Lab Coat (Clerk Coat) - You do not need this for first year.
Stethoscopes & Other Medical Equipment - For first year, really the only essential item is the stethoscope. Most of us use Littmann stethoscopes, either the classic III or the cardiology IV. If you have any questions about buying equipment beforehand, contact us. Note, there is usually a sale on stethoscopes from certain websites between June until the beginning of the school year - if you are comfortable waiting for these sales, we highly recommend doing so!
Computers & Alternatives - We don't have specific recommendations for your computer, but it is important to know that all our exams are written on our own laptops using a program called ExamSoft. For exams, you bring your own computer into the lecture hall and when ExamSoft is running it will lock you out of all other things on your computer. Most modern laptops are capable of running ExamSoft appropriately, but if you have any questions or concerns you can check out their website, or contact the UGME.
Day Planner - Whatever way you keep on top of your busy schedule, be it with an agenda, smart phone, or a personal mom in the class, keep it up! There will be lots of stuff to keep on top of once you get here and it’s always a good idea to have some sort of system to keep you (somewhat) sane. Elentra has an online calendar which many people choose to subscribe to on their iCals, Gmail Calendars, or phones.