RACDS primary exam notes

 So I haven't been back to this blog in a long time so unfortunately I missed a couple of comments asking how my experience was. I wrote about it in my main blog a while back but the memories have faded somewhat. http://dental-tidbits.blogspot.com/2020/12/primary-exams-experience.html I do think it is a worthwhile thing to do especially if you are thinking of specialising (purely as an entry requirement). For myself who likes to learn about any relevant subject the content was good and helped mainly with the taking of a medical history (pathology and physiology) as well as understanding the microbiological basis of dental disease. However, considering the time involved in preparing for the exams and the cost involved (though not that significant), I would say that most dentists would benefit more from actual dental CPD and to stay away from these exams unless you're thinking there's a chance you will specialise in the future. I can think of many more useful things I could&#

I am working my way through physiology. I have changed my mine from an earlier post. I think I should start at cell biology but do physiology next because it has important implications for anatomy and pathology. Microbiology is one of those "easier reading" real life kind of subjects that would be best later on when I am losing study motivation. The course notes for physiology are brief and unhelpful. My initial plan was to convert the pdf of the course notes to word and build on this as my personal notes but i've found that it's more useful to just remake the notes on a new document. The lecture notes are all over the place and don't follow a logical sequence. I would definitely advise you to read the past paper questions before studying. I have been churning through the lectures and clarifying some points with internet searches which have helped. Once i've finished a lecture I have gone through the course notes to add on one or two bits and pieces of infor

The lecture notes for this subject are fairly average and there are no course notes to supplement. What I have done is make my own course notes using the lecture notes as a guide. I would find a topic e.g insulin and glucagon and research this through a textbook or the internet. Once this was done, I would go back through the lecture to find any bits or pieces of information I had not researched and added this on but for the most part the textbook was much more in depth and accurate than the lecture notes. After I had finished a lecture i went back through the lecture objectives and noted down any topics the lecture didn't cover. There were quite a few but haven't really been examined in the past. On the second time through I will try to trim down the notes as it is very wordy (the first subject you study you will go too in depth with till you realise you're spending too much time on it). I will try to answer the  past questions and go back and write further notes on area

So I'm halfway through the orientation course. So far the first few topics Cell biology and pathology have been fairly dry but fear not, it does improve! They're boring but I suppose that's because I had covered such topics in university albeit a long time ago. The particular lecturers do have a droning voice and a tendency to read off the slides but I found the topics interesting anyway. It's quite remarkable how the inner workings of the body don't breakdown more often. I do remember thinking that same thing as I learned this stuff the first time around. I thought Mark Schifter's lectures were fantastic and he's a very knowledgeable and interesting speaker. He did deserve more time to go through his content though. Microbiology was pretty much the same stuff that I encountered in university but delivered much more enthusiastically and more in depth by Laurie Walsh than he did at university. I am looking forward to further lectures on Micro, Histo and A

The seven broad topics of the RACDS are: Anatomy, Cell biology and biochemistry, Histology, Microbiology, Pathology, Pharmacology, Physiology. To consider how to study through these I reckon it is best to start small and work bigger. More macro topics such as anatomy and physiology require knowledge of building blocks such as cell biology and microbiology. In my opinion, work through the topics as follows: 1. Cell biology and biochemistry 2. Microbiology 3. Histology 4. Physiology 5. Pathology 6. Pharmacology 7. Anatomy Once you have gone through the initial set of notes, revise your way through at your leisure. Will keep you updated if my thoughts change.

An axon is responsible for the conduction of action potentials along its length to communicate between the central nervous system and the periphery. Afferent nerve fibres transmit signals from receptors in the periphery towards the nerve cell body. Nerve fibres are classified into Groups of A, B and C fibres. A and B type fibres are myelinated and C fibres are unmyelinated. Alternatively, a classification exists of sensory fibres only of Type I, II, III, IV (Figure 1). Conduction speed relates to the degree of myelination and axon diameter. Figure 1 AAlpha fibres include type Ia and b fibres and refer to afferent fibres from skeletal muscle i.e golgi tendon organs and muscle spindles ABeta and Agamma fibres are Type II fibres and are afferent fibres from stretch receptors ADelta fibres are Type III fibres and are nociception fibres relating to acute pain, cold and pressure B fibres are less myelinated than A fibres and are usually general visceral afferent fibres and pregangl

Sensation is the perception of the brain in response to the processing of signals from the periphery. Peripheral receptors transduce stimulus energy into action potentials which travel up axons for neural processing. There are two basic types of receptors (Figure 1): A) Separate receptor cell with specialised membrane activated by the stimulus. On stimulation, the receptor cell releases a chemical messenger which crosses the extracellular cleft and binds to the afferent nerve ending opening specific chemical gated channels. B) specialised nerve endings of afferent peripheral nerves. Stimulus directly opens voltage gated channels in the membrane which can be ionotropic (ligand gated ion channels) or metabotropic (acts through a second messenger) Figure 1 Some types of receptors: Skin mechanoreceptors (Figure 2): Rapidly adapting (phasic) receptors has a quickly diminishing response and then stops e.g pacinian corpuscle.It does not provide information on the duration of the st