Lisa Roche followed the advice of doctors she met on placement about making the most of your time as an undergraduate and chose to take a BSc in Pharmacology at Liverpool.
“I chose to do Pharmacology because I really liked the Therapeutics lectures that we got in Year Three of Medicine.
In Pharmacology, you learn all about drug discovery and about specific drugs, really homing in on the mechanism of action of those. It is extremely interesting content.
When I began my intercalation course, I most looked forward to a few more lie-ins than what we're used to with Medicine!
I thought it would be really good to have a few less contact hours; a bit more chill. Looking back, it was not more chill! But I still had a brilliant year.
What was the most different part I found was the examination process. Since the pandemic, everything has changed to course work, which is very different from Medicine.
I think one of the most worthwhile things that I've acquired through intercalating might be the self-discipline that you get through having to manage your own schedule.
You have a lot more free time when you intercalate but that time is not your own. You have to go to the library, you have to use it wisely and it's up to you to take that responsibility and that initiative.
Through intercalating, I've got a better skill set in interpreting data and reading papers critically because, with Pharmacology, a big part of it was independent study which involved these things which I previously struggled with. Referencing is now something I can do!
The course has given me a greater appreciation for drug discovery, in particular the frustrations about drug attrition, and late stage drug attrition, and why we don't have drugs that work for everything.
As a medical student, a lot of the time when we were taught about drugs, it would get finished with, ‘They don't work for everyone’ and ‘one size fits all doesn't work’.
To get to learn more about that, and at a molecular level, was very interesting and I have definitely got a better sense for it. it will help me clinically in the future whenever I'm making decisions regarding prescribing and co-morbidities and toxicity.”