My Must Have Resources! (Medic Series)

Sorry for all the non-medical students out there but I just wanted to say which resources I found most useful in my first year of medical school at UCL.

For anatomy:

1. Core Anatomy for Students: Vol. 2: The Thorax, Abdomen, Pelvis and Perineum by Christopher Dean John Pegington: Unfortunately, this is the core material for Anatomy at UCL. I don't think it is all that good but it is the book that all the exam questions are based off.
2. Gray's Anatomy for Students: Super simple and easy to understand which starts from the basics and then expands up. It comes with a free online access too so although it's bulky you can get it on any device with internet access too.
3. Gray's Anatomy for Students Flash Cards: A simpler alternative to the big book but personally I would recommend both. The flash cards come with a ring and have been hole punched meaning that they are really easy to take places as you can just select the few that you need.
4. Acland's: Most medical school should, and UCL does, have a subscription to this and it's amazing. The programme has key videos of everything anatomy related with clear dissections and talks you through it. It also has summaries so you can just watch those for a recap. I hated that he talked so slow but you can speed up the parts you feel confident with and they are all separate so you can easily select topic by topic.

For science:

1. Human Physiology by Gillian Pocock: It covers all the physiology material that we need to know and more. It does have a little bit too much detail but honestly I don't mind because the lecturers tend to rush through a lot of the topics so this way you can take it at your own pace. 
2. Wheater's Functional Histology: A simple coloured guide to all the histology you will ever need to know with easy to follow and talked through slides.
3. Essential Immunology by Peter Delves: Definitely not needed because Delves actually teaches us and uses a lot of his pictures in the lecture slides which you can get online access to but I just wanted a more detail explaination of each diagram and so that's what I found useful.
4. Lectures!
5. Lecturecast: Go over key lectures and make sure, if you do miss any, you catch up online ASAP. I don't like to get even a day behind so if I miss one, I will do it that day. They tend to go up between 1-2 hours after the event. 

I bought very few books and the ones that I did buy, I can use for the entire course. To save money check the library to see if they have any because a lot of the time they do. Of course, you can continue to get book after book but honestly most of the time, the lectures cover enough and I just use to books to help me understand it.

When revising, I really struggled because they don't really release any past papers so this is what I have found useful:

1. SBAs from books.
2. ‘Past papers’ from different specifications. Just make sure you have the questions and answers before you spend time answering them all.
3. Formatives: We have a November and February formative so go over those questions and make sure you understand them all and why because they tend to repeat one of two questions in the summative.
4. BMA for Students: You can get some questions for free and then each year you can buy some more specific for your course. If I had had time, I probably would have bought some because I found them quite useful.
5. Instant Anatomy: Anatomy is hard to summarise but this website has some colourful posters which you can hang around your room.
6. X-rays, CT Scans and Blood Smears: They never really teach radiology so I would defintely recommend going through these yourself; make sure you are confident in interpretation. I found this really clear x-ray summary online. Similarly, blood smears is a topic that is quickly brushed upon but you need to know it, especially for OSCEs. I found this site really useful.

Hope that helps future medics! Leave it in the comments if you found any resources really useful.