Finals countdown…

After a relaxing two week break I have emerged from my chrysalis as a fully-fledged final year medical student. Do I feel any different? Do I look any different? People certainly seem to be treating me differently, all the focus is now on job applications in October and final exams in February next year. Doctors teaching us in hospitals have high expectations and seeing students from the year above us now working as FY1 Doctors is inspiring fear rather than confidence! I don’t think I have felt this nervous since freshers week, nervous feelings about the task ahead have resurfaced now that my ambition to become a Doctor is almost a reality, with a few final hurdles to overcome.

I embark on my final year by starting on my Acute Medicine block. This block is split between UHCW in Coventry and Warwick hospital. We spend time in the emergency department and the acute medical wards, doing a variety of shifts so we can see as many patients as possible. I’ve spent the first two weeks of the block on the acute medical wards at UHCW. These are interesting places to be as a student as you get to see lots of patients presenting with common medical problems that will come up in finals. Patients are clerked in A&E and once its decided that they are stable and need medical treatment as an inpatient or are waiting the results of investigations they come to the Acute medical ward (AMU) at UHCW. The doctors on AMU then clerk the patient and then arrange or follow up investigations and start treatment. There is a huge variety of patients on AMU at any one time. Patients may have come in with chest pain and shortness of breath so things like heart attack or pulmonary embolism need to be ruled out even if you suspect a chest infection. Some patients may need to be admitted under a particular medical specialty and will move once a bed becomes available and for others they can stay on AMU and leave after a few days of treatment. As a student you can clerk patients, help take bloods, insert cannulas and attend ward rounds and because its AMU, every day there are new patients to figure out.

Another area we have been assigned to is the Medical decisions unit (MDU), where patients are referred in by their GP for tests or treatment only available in hospital. These patients are usually not acutely unwell or unstable but they have presented with a problem that could be serious. For example if a patient presents to their GP with central chest pain that came on after eating a large meal, the GP simply doesn’t have the tests available in the community to rule in or rule out a heart attack even if it sounds like heartburn, that patient needs to come to hospital for further tests but they don’t necessarily need to come in an ambulance and wait for several hours in A&E. In MDU the tests can be done quickly and so patients can either be reassured confidently or brought in for further treatment. MDU is one of my favourite places to be as a medical student and it is great practice for finals. You can take a fresh history and examine the new patients and decide what your differential diagnosis is and what tests you want to do and then present it to one of the junior doctors who will agree (or disagree!) with you and who can organise the appropriate tests. Over the course of your shift you can chase up the results and actually find out if you were right and can decide on the management with the juniors and consultants. It’s a great chance to present cases to seniors and get feedback on your clinical reasoning skills and management.

Aside from getting to grips with the acute block I have also made a revision planner for finals, having the next 20 weeks before my first exam planned out and stuck to my study wall is terrifying! Hopefully when I start my A&E shifts next week that will provide a welcome distraction from my revision planner and the countdown to finals!

Luke Pemberton : 01 Sep 2017 12:29 |  Tags: Joanne Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem