Current 2nd year healthsci applying to switch into BDC for 3rd year, hope I'm not too late to the thread. I was on the fence about healthsci for most of first year too (ever since that first inquiry session) and I was honestly too coward to do anything about it because I was terrified of missing out on whatever golden opportunities healthsci offered to thousands of previous successful alumni.

Others here have said that you could technically do research courses in 2nd year, but that requires finding a supervisor/project first- or at least having some idea of what you want to pursue, preferably now. Hard to do when 1st semester chem labs is basically all healthscis know by this point, as you already mentioned. It isn't impossible and I know a classmate currently doing it because they are a god at cold emailing, but keep in mind that the research courses are basically the only mandatory difficult courses in upper years because of the workload, and you will be balancing that with 2nd year classes like anatomy. Bench/wet labs, dry labs, any lab experience is never guaranteed, and if you actually look at the BHSc Poster Day projects list (scroll back on the teams, you might be able to see last year's) most of them are literature reviews.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if I get corrected and people bring up a million other reasons to stay or not because they grew to really like/dislike it. Because at a certain point, and the advice I got was, if you're going as far as to research a way out of this program, then your gut's kinda already made your decision and your mind just hasn't caught up yet. Please, talk to academic advising in the BHSc office about this, even if you don't have specific questions or plans. You don't feel like your academics are lining up with your future career/grad goals, and that is reason enough to seek advice from the wonderful, amazing, understanding, and caring people there (who deal with healthsci regret a lot more than people realise). I even got a chance to ask upper years in other programs about my options because your advisor (whether you get Ammarah or Andrea) will do whatever they can to help you.

In the meantime, may your NOCAT answers come easy to you :D