RACDS primary exam notes

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...

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.

The human body derives support and nourishment from the external environment but its function is relatively independent of it. This independence comes from the fact that the tissues are contained from the external environment and is constituted by a separate internal environment that consists mainly of fluids circulating the body. 60% of the body is composed of fluids much of which are extracellular fluids (interstitial fluids and vascular fluid). Vascular fluid refers to the fluid portion of blood i.e blood plasma. Interstitial fluids are the fluids that surround the cells of the body which is filtered from Vascular fluid through capillaries. It brings nutrients to cells and drains waste products from them towards lymph vessels. Most cells are within 50 microns of a capillary which ensures rapid diffusion of nutrients from circulation to interstitial fluid to cells and vice versa. ECF is in  intimate contact with 4 organs that interface with external environment: alimentary cana...

Homeostasis is the maintenance of stable conditions in the internal environment. The internal environment is constantly disturbed by stress (stimuli that imbalances the internal environment). This stress can be external (heat, cold, lack of oxygen) or internal (pain, tumours). Control systems are in place to keep the physical and chemical state of the aqueous internal environment constant. Organ homeostatic control systems can be intrinsic/local (e.g autoregulation of tissue blood flow) or extrinsic/distant (e.g ANS, hormonal signalling). A breakdown in homeostasis is a feature of many disease states. Consider the balance of an organism as a see-saw and stresses as destabilising elements. In general, phyisological control systems will use receptors/sensor to detect an imbalance of a variable, send information down an afferent pathway to the control center which will process this signal and sent efferent  signals to the effector that will feedback to influence the magnitude of s...

Phyisology is the branch of biology dealing with normal function of the body. The lectures in the primary orientation will deal with these functions by exploring the various systems that underlie daily function of the human body. An understanding of phyisology is essential to understand the other subjects of pathology and pharmacology. Pathology will explore what happens when these systems break down and pharmacology will explore the medications that target the physiological systems of the body. An understanding of cell biology and biochemistry will explore the body at a cellular and subcellular level and you will see how these contribute to the larger functions of the body. The lectures in order are as follows: Homeostasis Sensation and local anaesthetic Pain Masticatory muscles Mastication Autonomic and enteric nervous systems Saliva Respiration The cardiovascular system

So I've been working on Dental Tidbits for a while and I'm entering a different stage in my career. I've signed up for the RACDS primary orientation course this year and I've just received a copy of the lecture notes. To be honest a lot of it looks like uni stuff (which i've long forgotten) but there is a fair amount of content to churn through. I do get the sense that supplemental texts will be very important to consolidate and extend knowledge from the lecture notes and I'm not sure how i'm going to manage to get my hands on them. I'm actually quite proud of the fact that I bought no textbooks over the course of my 5 year degree. I know that there will be copies of the text books in the ADA NSW library but this is a fair inconvenience to travel interstate for this. There may be some "non legal" copies on line that I may have to access or maybe some copies in the medical university libraries in Brisbane which is also a bit of a trek. Anywa...