From Facebook groups, to online revision sites, GAMSAT medical students are going online to hone their skills to ace their exam.

Online study communities and groups can be a great medium and a means of communication to assist medical students and junior doctors. 

Jordan Armstrong, the creator of Acer GAMSAT preparation courses one of the most popular courses aimed at helping people achieve success in GAMSAT says:

“The world wide web has made studying to be a doctor easier, if you know where to access the right resources. More importantly, the world wide web is effectively addressing the issues and flaws that accompany traditional offline learning."

He goes on to add that, "students are fed up with traditional learning and being talked at all the time. Why can’t students make their preparation and revision work around them rather the other way around?. With COVID, students are looking for material that helps with practical prep courses to help them with their medical examinations"

Benefits of online learning

Medical students from all over the world are able to exchange methods. Similarly, it’s a chance to be transparent and share experiences that some students have.

For example, you may have only a little general practitioner contact and then, in your third year, be sent straight to work on wards.

Jordan adds that there is the opportunity for follow-up when the work experience finishes. "There's a chance to say 'this is what you should have been thinking' and 'here's where you could have saved the situation.'"

Afterwards, discussions can be grouped together depending on the case, additional notes are provided.

Online interaction also addresses areas of concern. In the journal Occupational Medicine, the authors write about the importance of recognizing the needs of medical students' physical and mental well-being.

They say: "The impact of conflicts, exposure to system issues and death, human catastrophe and emergency situations on young medical students cannot be ignored or underestimated."

As with all degrees, the burden to study and learn can often be a primer to a sense of isolation. Speaking to other GAMSAT students of the same field can provide support and reassurance and keep such feelings at bay. "There's companionship, solidarity, and it can bring out the people who are besieged with pressure", Jordan says.

Whatever the complications, it’s obvious that the system does seem to be working with more and more universities in the UK, Ireland and Australia now using the GAMSAT test to select trainee doctors and with more being added every year. COVID has changed the landscape of the GAMSAT exam and coupled with the educational ecosystem.

During the pandemic, remote learning has, and will continue to be a lifeline for education but the opportunities that digital technologies offer go well beyond a stopgap solution during a crisis. Digital technology offers completely original answers to the question of what students learn, how they learn, and where and when they learn.

While online learning appears to have an advantage on traditional lecture and book based methods, it has a way to go before twenty-first century devices and utliamtately replace the established means of teaching – and not to mention mentoring.

"What we often see is the duplication of the traditional learning model: a revision PDF or preparation book that releases an app, displaying the content as it is in the book, with no supplementary functionality. From a knowledge acquisition standpoint, that adds very little benefit to those wanting to ace GAMSAT"

If you're interested in sitting the GAMSAT, Acer GAMSAT has its own blog where you can find further information and lots of free Gamsat resources.