How to become a doctor - or at least something resembling one?

They say there are many ways to skin a cat. I think that's disturbing and wrong. I love cats. But there really are many ways to become a doctor. At Wits, that is.

In matric you apply to study MBBCh (at Wits or MBChB at the other medical schools in the country). Now one of two things happen - you get accepted (yay!) or you don't (ahh...); either way, if you want to become a doctor, you'll be one! If you got accepted from matric, you enter medicine in first year (basic sciences), go on to second year (anatomy and dead people and stuff) and the years three (GEMP I) to six (GEMP IV).

Didn't get accepted? Then you go on to doing a Bachelor of Science (BSc), or Bachelor of Health Sciences (BHSc) or, quite frankly, any degree with some biological subtext. You finish your degree and then apply for the GEMP. What's the GEMP? It's a fancy side door into medicine. See this site for a way better explanation than I could give. Should you get accepted you enter GEMP I (the equivalent of MBBCh III) with all the peeps who got in from matric. Pretty cool.

You can enter the GEMP after you've done your honours, masters or PhD. Any age, too. Just a warning - it's a pretty tightly contested entry point. You need to work super hard in your first degree and try to be the best!

I, inadvertently, went for the third option. I received my rejection letter from Wits in December 2009. It sucked so badly. I then got an SMS from Wits saying I got accepted to do a BSc. I didn't even know what that was, but hey, I was now a university student. At the end of my first year I went to chat to a prof at the medical school and asked him if I could do anatomy in my second year of BSc. He suggested I apply to do BHSc and do anatomy with the guys who got into second year medicine. So I did that. At the beginning of second year the Dean spoke to us and said that there are 20 spots available for the top performing students. At the end, 7 of us made the cut!

I'm not too sure whether Wits offers that anymore. It might have been a once off thing.

Anyway, that's it for now. If you have any questions, comment below.

What's this blog all about?

The Unofficial GEMP Guide. Sounds pretty official? Well, it really isn't. This blog-site is in no way affiliated with the University of the Witwatersrand. I'm Juan. A (now) final year medical student at Wits.

The reason for this blog-site? When I entered GEMP (Graduate Entry Medical Programme, but you probably already know what the acronym stands for, why else would you be on this site?) I was lost, overwhelmed and was questioning what "sleep" meant. I wished there was some sort of guide to this whole new world of Medicine. A map, if you will.

So here it is. The map that will, hopefully, make your life in GEMP a little easier. I'm writing it from my personal experiences, and it might differ from yours. I'll only be able to make comments on what I've seen, heard, smelled (Trauma) and tasted (Obstetrics). Only kidding about the tasting thing, but a jet of amniotic fluid did come very close to my pie-hole. I'll also put some tips where I can, to help the intrigued reader (that's hopefully you).

My posts will be aimed at students going into GEMP I (the great unknown), GEMP II (the lesser, but still mostly unknown) and GEMP III (the 'Hey! I'm actually doing doctory stuff!' year) and also GEMP IV, as I go through my blocks.

The post after this one will be about the different ways you can get into Medicine at Wits, and then the way I got in.

I hope you'll enjoy my posts! Please feel free to comment. If I can, I'll be more than happy to help out. And if I can't help, hopefully I can point you in the right direction.

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