[SciMania]

Clinical Biochemistry is taught by two professors: Dr. Hill and Dr. Macri.

They each teach the course for half the semester. Dr. Hill was an amazing professor - crystal clear explanations and great lecture notes as well. His test questions tended to be on the more wordy side and slightly more difficult, but he was by far the better professor. Dr. Macri tended to drone on during lectures, going off into almost completely unrelated rants for 10-15 mins of the class. His test questions tended to be on the easy side.

The course starts with the dry basic concepts surrounding laboratory testing such as test characteristics then moves on to cover the role of the kidney, acid-base balance, pathologies associated with the kidney, the liver and associated pathologies.

Then the 2nd half of the course deals with endocrinology - you would think this would be interesting, however I personally did not enjoy it because I was not a big fan of Dr. Macri's teaching style. However, we talked about the endocrine glands, the hypothalamus/pituitary and the role of several hormones produced by the pituitary in maintaining bodily functions. Finally, we looked at the thyroid gland. Normally, we would have talked about cardiovascular disease and diabetes, however there was not enough time.

The course consisted of 3 term tests
-all Multiple choice questions
-approximately 35 questions each
-non cumulative

The term tests were average difficulty. Everyone did really well in the first test, then the averages seemed to go down slightly for the next 2 - but were still fairly high.

The exam was cumulative, covering the entire course, it consisted of 100 MC questions, 50 from each professor. It tended to repeat a lot of the questions from the midterm exams.

Overall, it was a VERY interesting course, and you'll come out having learned a lot. But that's just the thing - there is A LOT of material and this course is almost entirely memory based - recalling facts and/or applying them to case studies. If you are good at memory work then this is a good course for you. Otherwise, it is still really interesting!

Note: the textbook was not very useful (for me). it seemed all questions were derived from the lecture notes. however, if you do not attend class, then you will likely need the textbook for further clarification of material.

I liked Macri's lectures better than Hill's. Both were good professors though.

This was my favourite course this past year. I thought it was very interesting and taught very well by Dr. Macri and Hill. I definitely recommend this course.

I liked Dr. Hill better than Macri. Macri would put really vague questions on tests. But nevertheless, very interesting course

Is it possible to get a good mark in this class? Are the questions on the tests and exam that are pure memorization really random facts that were mentioned once in class or are they relevant knowledge questions?

thanks

very relevant. all in the notes. conceptual questions too. great class. and definitley possible to do well if you put in enough effort.

I'm taking it this semester and our second test had almost half the questions come from case studies so make sure you know the ones from the lectures and the ones mentioned in the textbook. Dr. Hill also talked about a few case studies for the final exam that he would not include in the lecture notes and would tell people off if they tried to take photos with their cameras.

Has this course changed over the past year? I talked to a lot of people and the general concensus is that THIS COURSE IS REALLY HARD

They all said you have to put in a lot of time and effort into this course and the tests are difficult. People who usually get 11s and 12s got only like 10 or 9.

Confirm?

I thought the tests were really straight forward.. but you do have to put time into studying because there is a lot of stuff u need to know. I'd definitely recommend making algorithms and summaries, because there is a lot of 'diagnosis' in this course. But IMO, if you know your stuff, the tests are not that difficult.

The course is pretty much a bird if you've taken physiology courses before.
For me, it was a repeat of things I've learned from before so I found it really boring.

I don't know how people saw this as a bird course. Macri's lectures weren't helpful at all, he would often talk about additional small details in lectures and put them on his midterm. Case studies were indeed interesting but it was purely memorization based; just had memo conditions and what disorder applied to it. Hill's lectures were better and more helpful.

the exam last year was horrible. there were many mistakes, seemed like they rushed the whole thing and there were a lot of repeats, which was good if you knew the answer and got free marks or it was disastrous since you got both wrong.

Do you guys think the textbook is useful?

Yeah is it worth buying the textbook for this class?

was the exam a lot to study for, seeing as there was 3 term tests, and it is cumulative? would taking first year anatomy serve as a good foundation for the material covered in this course?

There's only two tests now. But i'd definitely say the exam had quite a bit to study for, nothing ridiculous but you had to put in the time (yes it is cumulative). Taking anatomy/physiology really helped me, as most of the endocrinology units were essentially a review.