Shantanu Kundu combined his passions for emergency medicine and mental health into his intercalated degree in the MSc Acute Critical and Emergency (ACE) Medicine course.
“I always planned on intercalating, it was very much a case of how can I build upon my research skills and get some more experience. I chose the ACE course because I felt I wanted to build up my emergency medicine skills, learn more about A&E and how that works and with a specific focus, probably not quite commonly, on mental health.
When I first started, I didn’t know what a Masters level course is going to be like, so it was quite nerve wracking but I was looking forward to having a bit of clinical experience as well, because I didn't want to lose that.
Doing a Masters in Emergency Medicine meant you got to go to placement but more as an adult learner, so you've got to go in on your own terms.
You got to do a lot of things under supervision so being in a trauma room and getting involved and helping out when it's safe to do so, and that was quite an exciting thing to do.
There was a good amount of clinical exposure, around 12 weeks, and there's definitely nothing boring about the ACE course because every single subject was about someone who might be in a critical state or someone who might be in a traumatic accident. There was even military lectures and sessions on seeing complex cases in A&E.
It gives you a really good, wide range of understanding on what it means to be sort of a generalist emergency medicine doctor.
While also looking at the trauma side and Orthopaedics and then going to critical care as well.
Looking back now, probably the best thing for me was creating pieces of work that have an impact on community, but also collecting information as well. It meant that I could present stats and results to various people in the mental health space, and it meant that I could look at how I can improve things for next year in A&E.”