In 5th year MBBS, you are less than a few months away from being inducted into the medical profession. During my middle years in medical school, I always hoped for when I will become a 5th year medical student…I just wanted to be done with med school, or at least closer to being done.
But stepping into 5th year medical school, I realized that it was another story altogether;
Sleepless nights
Palpitations here and there
Thoughts of what next after medical school and the like filled my mind.
At some point, I felt like staying longer in school as I was worried about what next would happen outside the 4 walls of medical school.
I knew I would be on my own with whatever was left of my career to decide; whether I would want to continue furthering my medical career, whether I should look for alternate career paths, just a whole lot of things I couldn’t lay off my mind.
Aside from that, I had the 5th year MBBS subjects and the MBBS exams to battle too. So it was just a whole lot.
If you are wondering what it actually feels like to be in the 5th of medical school, this post covers 12 things you should expect as a 5th year medical student.
Table of Contents
- Who Is a 5th Year Medical Student?
- What happens in the 5th year of medical school?
- What are the 5th year Mbbs subjects?
- Do 5th Year Medical Students Get Paid?
- 12 Things To Expect In Your 5th Year of Medical School
- Prepare for those days of a-motivation
- More intense existential crises
- You will become more wealth conscious
- You may start having more interest in dating
- Your confidence in medical practice will be overboard
- You no longer study as hard as you used to
- It seems like you have figured it all out
- You may find yourself reading extra-curricular books
- You start seeking to build more memories
- You may start experiencing a loss of interest in medicine
- You stop caring much about grades
- You have more friends
- Final Words!
Who Is a 5th Year Medical Student?
A 5th year medical student in the UK is the same as a final-year medical student who just has a single professional medical exam left to become a medical doctor. However, a 5th year medical student in some other countries like Nigeria still has 2 more professional exams to pass to be inducted into the medical and dental council of the federation. These two exams are the 4th MBBS exam and the Final MBBS exam.
What happens in the 5th year of medical school?
In the 5th year of medical school, medical students complete their remaining batches of clinical rotations; Medicine and Surgery 3 and 4, while they also complete the last batches of their block lectures as medical students.
Also, in the 5th year of medical school, you are already a very senior medical student and may find yourself assisting in common clinical procedures and surgeries, joining residents during night calls, and being part of the emergency/casualty management team. But this is if you are enthusiastic enough to make yourself available.
What are the 5th year Mbbs subjects?
For most medical schools, the 5th year MBBS subjects include:
- Medicine 3 and 4
- Surgery 3 and 4
- Community Medicine or Public Health
- Electives like:
- Radiology
- Ophthalmology
- ENT/Otolaryngology
- Dermatology
- Psychiatry and
- Family Medicine
Do 5th Year Medical Students Get Paid?
No! 5th year medical students do not get paid. However, there are creative ways you can use to make money as a medical student.
If you are looking for how to make money in medical school, we have a separate blog post that shares exclusive information on this topic.
12 Things To Expect In Your 5th Year of Medical School
As I stated earlier, 5th year of medical school comes with its own hassles even though it is said to be one of the best years of medical school as it is closer to your graduation date.
But if you are anxious about jumping straight into your 5th year MBBS program without any clue on what it could be like, this post got you covered.
Here are the 12 things you should expect in 5th year of medical school:
- Prepare for those days of a-motivation
- More intense existential crises
- You will become more wealth conscious
- You may start having more interest in dating
- Your confidence will in medical practice shoot
- You no longer study as hard as you used to
- It seems like you have figured it all out
- You may find yourself reading extra-curricular books
- You start seeking to build more memories
- You may start experiencing a loss of interest in medicine
- You stop caring much about grades
- You have more friends
Prepare for those days of a-motivation
Remember all those vibes you entered medical school with during your first year of medical school? Those doctor-to-be vibes keep dropping after each medical school year and reach their all-time low in the 5th year MBBS class.
In your 5th year of medical school, you become so used to seeing patients in the hospital that you even get tired of seeing them. You spend most of your time with other doctors during your clinical clerkship.
You just get used to nearly everything that made your heartbeat for this profession.
Some 5th year medical students will notice that they now appear late for rotations and block lectures, and on their dark days, they don’t come at all.
Loss of vibes and motivation is one issue every 5th year medical student should prepare for and must be handled well before it grows beyond your control.
More intense existential crises
By existential crises, I actually mean all those times you spend asking yourself why you are actually studying medicine, what made you choose this profession? Which specialty should you choose?
Do you know all those questions that just get you depressed? You get to ask them more now.
You will become more wealth conscious
Yes! Your mind gets bogged down by issues like wealth building.
This is more for those who have sponsored and guardians catering for their tuition because they know that very soon they will be left to provide for themselves as a fish let out of a river.
Many students at this level will start thinking of alternate sources of income if they don’t already have one. Many will start saving more, and a whole lot more!
You may start having more interest in dating
As a final-year medical student, you suddenly realize that old age is settling down on you. You become more conscious of your love life.
For many 5th year mbbs students will start dating younger colleagues, and thoughts of how to settle down will start creeping in gradually.
You should enjoy this post on the things you must know before dating a medical student.
Your confidence in medical practice will be overboard
Suddenly, in your 5th year of medical school, especially after passing your Paediatrics and Oby/Gynea exams, you notice your knowledge of clinical practice to be through the roof.
There is rarely any medical term or condition you have never heard of before, and you easily understand any medical text.
This confidence is usually because of the exposure you acquired from your pediatrics and Oby/GYN rotations.
You no longer study as hard as you used to
As your confidence grows, your desire to read keeps dropping. You get tired of reading only texts related to medicine or surgery.
Many 5th year medical students will suddenly prefer watching medical videos to reading.
I know of a colleague that is so good that he has bagged up to 4 distinctions as of 5th year. He suddenly started complaining that he was finding it difficult to read medical textbooks during the later days of our 5th year in medical school.
Instead, he now reads crash courses in different systems in preparation for the final exam.
The struggle is real!
It seems like you have figured it all out
You also suddenly seem to have figured all of the medical school exams out during 5th year MBBS. You no longer panic during tests or medical school exams. Everything now comes naturally to you.
From experience, you can deduce the most likely questions to come out in a test or exam. This partly contributes to why you study less than before because you feel like you will still find a way to tackle the test after all.
You may find yourself reading extra-curricular books
In your 5th year of medical school, you also suddenly figure out that your whole life has been revolving around medicine only for the past 5 years.
So you decide to shake up your life to learn about other things in various spheres of life.
You will find medics to be reading books on finance, politics, and history, and even start taking entrepreneurship courses to boost their financial literacy.
No one wants to be a doctor who knows nothing outside the four walls of the hospital. You want to be that versatile doctor who can contribute one or more whenever an unconventional topic is being discussed among your peers.
Also, Read: 12 Books You Must Read For A Happy Life
You start seeking to build more memories
You will suddenly start regretting all those years in medical school you spent just studying while neglecting your social life. Those days when your only best memory in school was about how you passed a particular medical school exam.
And to compensate for those ‘wasted years’, you start hanging out more with friends, attending parties and friends’ celebrations, and taking more pictures.
You just want more fun things to remember when you leave medical school. You don’t want all the memories you build for those years to be just about books, exams, and studies, you want to add more spice to them.
You may start experiencing a loss of interest in medicine
I have personally witnessed a lot of 5th year medical students who are strongly considering a change of career.
They just couldn’t deal with the burnout any longer coupled with more that is to come when they become doctors proper.
You stop caring much about grades
This is true for more than 90% of 5th year MBBS students. They suddenly just want to pass their medical exams. Hardly will you find a 5th year medical student who still wants a distinction.
The stress is just so much that they just wish to graduate and get on with their lives. And any score just above the cut-off becomes very acceptable for them.
You have more friends
Medical students are notoriously known for having very few friends. But it is more pronounced during the first few years of medical school.
As you enter higher classes like the 5th year of medical school, you may find yourself coming in contact with more persons, especially during clinical rotations.
However, most of these persons are students of other health professions like nursing, medical laboratory science, and medical radiography. You meet these persons while they are doing their own clinical rotations too.
Final Words!
5th year medical student comes with lots of changes in the life of a medical student. Some of these changes are positive, while some are negative and must be controlled before it gets out of hand.
You can read our post on how to stay motivated in medical school to help you keep up with the growing changes in your attitude towards the medical profession.
In conclusion, it is a beautiful feeling knowing that you are but a stone’s throw away from completing your medical school journey. But don’t let the fun it comes with engulfing you so much that you end up spending more time than is expected of you to graduate.
