Difference between Medicine and Life Sciences?

[bschuayy]

Hi Guys,

What is the major difference between Medicine and Biology? They do share some similar modules after all - Immunology, Cell Biology etc etc...

Is Medicine more focused on the Human Body? But what's the difference with Biology then, since one can choose BioMedical under Biology as well?

How are the modules for Medicine like as well? Can anyone give a complete listing?

Lastly, how is Medicine thought?

Thanks for any input provided! Cheers, mate!

[hoseh]

I believe the biggest difference would be that medicine trains you to be a doctor that can start working in a hospital while a biology course would probably not give you that type of training.

I don't know about biology/biomedical courses but for medicine, there are generally two stages - pre-clinical and clinical years. Pre-clinical years, you learn anatomy, physiology (yeah and immunology etc), histology, pathology, pharmacology AND some clinical skills for some schools. Clinical years, you spend much more time in the hospitals, transitioning from memorizing lecture notes to applying what you have learnt in real life situations, "modules" wise, I believe in general for most schools, there would be a medicine, surgery, palliative care, pediatrics, g&o, psychiatry roations. Don't quote me on this.

While we tend to focus a lot on what kind of knowledge we could potentially gain from a degree, specifically scientific knowledge in this case, it is important not to overlook the fact that the practice of medicine isn't only about science, it is also about your interaction with patients to achieve the best clinical outcome.

I would say that medicine prepares you to be a clinician while biomedical degree might prepare you to be a biomedical scientist/ researcher so you would definitely need to learn some professional skills in the clinical setting in medicine.

Wrt how medicine is taught, I believe you are referring to nus/ntu so I can't give you an answer for that.

Cheers.

[kengmin]

Originally Posted by hoseh

I believe the biggest difference would be that medicine trains you to be a doctor that can start working in a hospital while a biology course would probably not give you that type of training.

I don't know about biology/biomedical courses but for medicine, there are generally two stages - pre-clinical and clinical years. Pre-clinical years, you learn anatomy, physiology (yeah and immunology etc), histology, pathology, pharmacology AND some clinical skills for some schools. Clinical years, you spend much more time in the hospitals, transitioning from memorizing lecture notes to applying what you have learnt in real life situations, "modules" wise, I believe in general for most schools, there would be a medicine, surgery, palliative care, pediatrics, g&o, psychiatry roations. Don't quote me on this.

While we tend to focus a lot on what kind of knowledge we could potentially gain from a degree, specifically scientific knowledge in this case, it is important not to overlook the fact that the practice of medicine isn't only about science, it is also about your interaction with patients to achieve the best clinical outcome.

I would say that medicine prepares you to be a clinician while biomedical degree might prepare you to be a biomedical scientist/ researcher so you would definitely need to learn some professional skills in the clinical setting in medicine.

Wrt how medicine is taught, I believe you are referring to nus/ntu so I can't give you an answer for that.

Cheers.

Are you currently doing medicine in NUS/NTU?