As I write this, we have completed 3 weeks (ALREADY!) of our GEMP 2 / 4th year of medicine at Wits! The year starts off with a Neurosciences block, which in itself is made up of neurology and psychiatry.
One of the questions I get frequently from people trying to get into GEMP is if missing out on dissection (a second year med school component) is a massive set-back for students. For GEMP 1, I’d definitely say there is no disadvantage that I could tell – the anatomy labs are relatively straight-forward, and there are cadavers and specimens for each of the relative systems that you can work with.
For the first 3 weeks of GEMP 2, however, I have strongly felt that absence of knowledge. Understandably, getting the brain to understand exactly how the brain understands is inherently confusing, but it has been the most difficult 3 weeks of medical school for me by a long stretch.
My South African Medical School Journey 