BMS2031: Body Systems

45% total from all labs (including a 2% career development module)
15% midsem
10% endocrinology + respiratory Moodle quiz, some people called this midsem 2
30% final exam

130 minutes for 17 multis + 7 x 14-mark short answer questions (1 SAQ per lecture + 1 SAQ on the acid-base workshop) for a grand total of 115 marks. Although the exam was open book, you’ll barely have enough time to look anything up by Google or your notes. I almost didn’t open my notes at all due to the time pressure, I had to leave a 5-marker almost completely blank in the end and didn’t get the chance to check over my answer for any of the multis, that’s how pushed for time the exam was (even more so than the midsem). To be fair, I did not do enough timed practice of the provided practice questions because of the hassle of receiving feedback via Moodle, so don’t be like me (the BMS2021 practice short answer questions provide you with the marking schemes whereas you have to send your answers through the Moodle forums for manual feedback for BMS2031). The exam questions were very fair themselves, they’re way easier than the practice short answer questions since they’re divided into more manageable subquestions instead of essay-style responses. However given the sheer amount of stuff to write down for certain short answer questions, I’d say that a more appropriate exam length would be 2hr 40 min instead of 2hr 10 min. I felt BMS2031 was my worst performing exam of this semester. Edit: results are out, after back calculating the exam score, it was indeed my lowest. I only expected 80/115 (because I only gave 2 sentence responses to quite a few 4-5 markers, but apparently it’s 96/115 from my calculations. They either scaled it up a lot or were really easy on the marking, maybe because we were marked quite strictly for the in-sem assessments, they’re compensating by being chill on the exam responses.

Edit: Julia released some feedback, from her average section values table, the average mark was 64% (74/115). Furthermore, only ~17-18% of people got HD on the exam. I'd say there was quite a lot of scaling as opposed to lenient marking.

The midsem examined the cardiovascular and renal lecture, workshop and practical content (however it does not assess the water diuresis lab) and had 30 multiple choice questions to be completed in 45 minutes. The time limit is very tight so the midsem wasn’t very Googleable, but nonetheless it was open book. Now, the definition of a MCQ is very misleading, some of the more application-based questions had a billion parts to them in drop-down menus, but there were plenty of free marks to be gained from stock standard MCQs that were straight recall (those billion-part MCQs were weighed the same as single-answer MCQs). If you know your trends for cardiovascular and renal physiology (eg increased sympathetic nervous system activity= increase blood pressure, increase RAAS activity etc, increased Bowman capsule hydrostatic pressure= decreased filtration), you’ll be fine.

The endocrine and respiratory test was 20 multis in 30 minutes and assesses the endocrine and respiratory lecture content as well as the endocrine workshop. ALL of the questions were straight recall unlike the midsem and can be looked up very easily on Google or in your lecture slides since they weren’t application-style and overly specific. You won’t be pushed for time at all so take the time to check through your answers because this is probably the easiest 10% assessment you’ll ever get in a biomed unit.

I will now list everything we did in the labs and the % of your overall grade associated with each lab assessment. Overall there is a huge focus on group projects, but I didn’t really have any bad experiences with any of the group projects in this unit because I actually ended up with a good group. As with my other units, I didn’t trust my group members with doing anything in the beginning which was a source of tension, but as the semester went on, I softened and put more trust in them and sure enough, they did not disappoint me. Unlike previous physiology units (BMS1031 and BMS1052), the labs in BMS2031 were actually really good, so they must have improved the lab program from the time of the last BMS2031 review on this thread.

Career workshop on networking (2%): Basically teaching us how to take advantage of the nepotistic job market- it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. If you literally put down anything in your Pebblepad portfolio, you’ll be awarded the full 2% of your overall grade. I was also introduced to my team members with whom I’ll have to write up all group reports in the semester, as well as my TA, Nadya, who was a final year postgrad med student at Monash. Throughout the semester it was always interesting to hear about Nadya’s journey from biomed into postgrad Monash med which is the pathway I want to take myself.

Toad cardiac muscle lab (11%): Consists of a worksheet we had to hand in by the time the lab session finished (thank God no references required). The experiment investigates the effects of stretching a piece of isolated toad ventricular muscle on its force of contraction upon electrical stimulation. Adrenergic agonists and antagonists were also investigated for their effects on the force of contraction. I was in the cohort who did this lab online and the gut lab in-person (the other stream did this in-person but got to do the gut lab online). Since the worksheet was made available to us on Monday of the lab week and my lab was on Thursday, I made a head start on it and basically walked into it with the worksheet completed. I even briefed my team at 5AM on what we’re doing and what each of our job is (doing a briefing in the group chat the night/morning before the lab became something of a ritual for me whenever there’s a group assessment lab). However, there were some technical difficulties on the day which created some unnecessary panic and delays, and just like in high school bio, I was missing a few key points in my pre-prepared theoretical question responses. Nadya had to basically hold our hands throughout the whole Zoom lab, she told us that it doesn’t actually matter if we submit something 5 minutes late for this particular lab because when she was in biomed, she handed a billion things in 2 minutes late. All of those near-submission panic attacks from BMS1062 were for nothing apparently. Due to my less than stellar responses to the theoretical questions, we were only given 86.9% for the report which was only slightly above cohort average.

Human CVS lab (5%): Examines the effect of exercise and the baroreceptor reflex on the cardiovascular system (I was the test subject for the baroreceptor reflex). Assessed by a 10-multiple choice Moodle prequiz to be completed within 20 minutes which was very easy to full mark if you watched all 4 cardiovascular lectures and paid attention to the workshops thus far in the unit. There were no assessments in the lab or after the lab, but apparently someone who full marked the prequiz decided to wag the lab, and then had their mark revoked.

Water diuresis/renal function lab (11%): Examines the effect of hydration and exercise on urine production rate in human test subjects (I wasn’t allowed to be a test subject due to being asthmatic, but I was the timekeeper, data collector and team manager). AKA the peeing lab. The test subjects drank a water load and their urine were collected at 20 minute intervals and analysed for their volume and Na+ concentration. For the writeup, you’re provided with a report template which is quite similar to the CHM2911 proformas with a bunch of theoretical questions for you to answer as well as some that require you to refer to the statistically-analysed cohort data. The final report was not hard at all, we answered all the questions really well, checked our work with literature and got 94.2% (it was better than the 1st team report as we got 2 weeks or so to complete it).

Spirometry/lung function lab (5%): Taught us the basics of spirometry, helping us identify different lung volumes and showing us how obstructive lung diseases differ from restrictive ones in their presentation on a spirometer recording. I completed the online version of the lab which was made for the 2020 cohort before I came into the lab, so I knew exactly what was going on. The assessment came in the form of a 5-multiple choice question quiz on the lab content (you’ve read that right, 5 questions for 5% of your overall grade). Nadya initially trolled me by saying when she was in biomed this was insanely hard and many people got 0s for not studying for it, but all the questions were free marks. I’m not aware of anyone who didn’t get 5/5

Gut function lab (1% prequiz + 10% proforma-style report): The last lab of the semester was on determining whether your assigned piece of isolated rabbit ileum has predominantly sympathetic or parasympathetic innervation using receptor agonists and antagonists (pharmacological techniques) to support the hypothesis. Although most people had sympathetic innervation ileum sections showing up with an inhibitory effect on its spontaneous contractions, we were stoked when my group somehow ended up with an excitatory effect in contractility indicative of parasympathetic innervation (Julia, Ari and the substitute TA filling in for Nadya were all very excited as well and crowded around my table). I had to pull an all nighter on the last day of semester to finish that report off (we were given around 1 week after the lab this time), but it was worth it in the end when the results came back with 96.7%.

Julia Choate
Ari Pinar
Craig Harrison
Liz Davis

This unit was the 2nd or 3rd best unit I ever took (surpassed only by BMS1062 and CHM1011). I used to be so bad at high school bio and homeostasis was the bane of my existence, but this physiology unit really kindled my love for the discipline with its great teaching staff and innovative teaching activities. I realised pretty early on in the semester that I can use my elective chem knowledge (specifically, Le Chateliers Principle) to help me understand all trends in physiology which I’d say was my eureka moment in biomed. I would’ve given BMS2031 a 5/5 if it were not for the final exam’s difficulty (not in terms of content, but in terms of time management).

Julia (unit coordinator) has you for the cardiovascular, renal and digestive system lectures. She’s like your kind old grandma who bakes you cookies when you come to visit, and she’s always friendly and approachable in the labs and on the unit forums. Her quirk is signing off her forum posts with “Happy X!” where X is “writing” when we’re writing a lab report, “digesting” when we’re clarifying something about her digestive system lectures and “studying” when we’re cramming for the midsem or finals. I know most lecturers don’t answer questions in a lot of detail because they got their own research to take care of or something, but Julia really goes above and beyond in answering student’s forum questions (including my numerous dumb questions on the labs). I contributed heavily to answering other student’s question as well because it trains my explanation skills if I were to become a teacher, and it’s great short answer response practice for me. Consequently, Julia didn’t answer the student I was replying to, I wasn’t sure if she forgot to or she felt it was unnecessary because I already answered them. I was kind of hoping that she would confirm whether or not my understanding or explanation were of exam quality. On the topic of education, since a potential Master of Secondary Teaching requires 2 science sequences, I have to sacrifice 2 chem units from my electives including CHM3990 for 2 biological units, and when I learned that Julia’s education lab is taking students interested in physiology education, I figured out that it may not be a bad idea to enrol in PHY3990 with her research group in 3rd year.

Ari (assistant unit coordinator) takes 3 of the 4 respiratory lectures (the 4th lecture was replaced by an online learning module on rona). He kind of read off his slides which wasn’t like his awesome lectures in BMS1052 at all, some of which weren’t formatted correctly as the images and text boxes have clearly been moved around. As such, I had to spend quite a lot of time watching Ninja Nerd on Youtube to understand the respiratory lecture content and I believe respiratory was my worst topic on the final exam as well. However, he’s very enthusiastic on the forums, preferring to guide us in the correct direction instead of giving us the answer right away which avoids the spoon feeding pitfall. He’s more than happy to clarify aspects of his lectures that weren’t well explained and we all appreciated that very much. One day, he even emailed me to talk about something, he has 1 on 1 catch up sessions with every student in the cohort to check on how they’re going and he offered me some really valuable advice in preparing for med interviews. Like in BMS1031 and BMS1052, he saved our incompetent a*ses in the labs time and time again (not just the respiratory lab, EVERY SINGLE lab).

Craig’s lectures were on the endocrine and reproductive systems. While you do get all the info you need from his lecture slides, they’re squeezed into a tiny corner and barely visible (but they’re still there). However, he’s really good at choosing the images that tell the clearest story on his slides and his explanations were mostly clearly, although I did have to resort to Khan Academy to help me understand the female reproductive system lectures where the endocrinology associated with pregnancy and delivery were extremely complicated. The endocrine workshop ran by him was especially hilarious with his homebrew educational video.

Liz only takes 1 pharmacology lecture. It was pretty similar to the enzyme kinetics ie Michaelis Menten double reciprocal plots you were introduced to in BMS1011, but applied in a pharmacological context where you discuss affinity, potency and efficacy.

No. Practice questions from past final exams provided which were significantly more difficult than the actual exam.

4.5 out of 5

Yes, with screen capture

Vanders Physiology (VERY useful for lab report write-ups)

2 x 1 hr recorded lectures
1 x 3 hr lab every 2nd week
1 x 1 hr (online) or 2 hr (in-person) workshop during lab time every 2nd week

While the workshops didn’t have assessments you must complete within them, a lot of the other in semester assessments as well as the final exam may potentially examine workshop content. Basically the workshops are interactive lectures where your TA is your lecturer. If they’re online (which they were most of the time), they ran only for 1 hour, but when they’re on campus they usually ran for 2. I heard these were actually optional, but I chose not to skip any and I felt that’s the best decision ever. Nadya took us through so many exam style ie application/case study questions and helped us so much with understanding and consolidating the lecture content of that week and my team really got a bonding experience in those tutorials. I must confess that I did not pay attention at all in my last ever workshop in week 12 as I was busy finalising my gut report, but then again neither did anyone else because we all follow the due today do today rule.

2021 Sem 1

92 HD

Whether you enjoy or don't enjoy the content (and everyone enjoys the content), this is the most organized unit of biomed yet. Everything fits so well, and each segment of the unit is clearly distinguished, creating a very well structured unit.

The unit is divided into body systems. In order, these are CVS, renal, endocrine (and a pharma lecture), respiratory, gut and reproduction. Julia Choate, the unit coordinator, handles CVS, renal and gut. She is an incredible lecturer, and manages to explain what could be potentially confusing information in a clear manner. She is also willing to assist students, even in her own time. Yvonne Hodgson, who handles endocrine and respiratory, is not as good. However, she does make a consistent effort to make her lectures more interactive and enjoyable. Despite being less interesting to listen to, she does provide additional content, including post-lecture questions and summaries. Renea Taylor covers the section on reproduction, and is also a very competent lecture.

The labs of this unit are almost bi-weekly. There are 5 labs, which consolidate lecture content. The labs, which are quite similar to the BMS1052 labs (being another physiology unit), are probably what stops this unit from being a 5/5. They're stressful, repetitive, and generally just not very fun.

The online quizzes, and practical assessment is a mix of lab and lecture content. The practical assessment consists filling out a document, relating to what happened in the labs. The questions aren't too difficult, and most marks will be lost on silly errors, and subjective reviews by the TA marking your work. Because of this, it is important to proofread this assessment. The mid-sem is a mirror of the final exam. Both consist of short answer questions (that end up being extended response, from how much students write in them) and MCQ's. In both, the short answer questions constitute the majority of the marks.
Overall, this unit is a pretty solid unit. The content is enjoyable, the assessment is mostly fair, and the unit is structured well. Definitely the best unit of this semester.

Nope.

4.5 out of 5

Vanders is probably quite good, but I didn't use it.

2016, Semester 2

Unknown