The End of Assistantship and the Beginning of the World of Work

Our last block of medical school has come to an end. On Thursday of this week, we attended our last half-day of lectures at the Medical Teaching Centre, handed over our Assistantship sign-off books, and walked out into the pouring rain for the last time. It is a very strange feeling – so many hours and days of our lives have been spent in this building, it’s hard to believe that we’ll not be going back again. But at the same time, we are all very ready to move on to the next step in our lives, start putting our training into practice, and start earning some money.

The end of Assistantship was quite bittersweet. We have spent so many of the past years at the local hospitals in Warwickshire that they have become very familiar to us. We know the codes to the stock cupboards, we say hello to the porters, we even give directions to visitors in the corridor when they are looking lost. Yet those of us who are not staying are probably not coming back to these hospitals again. We’ve done the drive up the A444 or down the A46 for the last time, and now all that is left is for us to walk across the stage and collect our degree certificate.

All of the doctors, nurses and other clinical staff on our ward were very friendly and I really enjoyed both of our Assistantship placements. True to form, it was really effective at teaching us what F1s (foundation-year 1 doctors) actually do whilst on the ward. At the beginning, I wondered if eight weeks wouldn’t be a little overkill, but it was actually really useful and worthwhile – I feel much more comfortable about what is expected of us than I did before, and this is after spending several years on hospital wards as a learning student.

And interestingly, in Assistantship we were with entirely different clinical partnership groups than we’ve had up to now. I have no idea why the med-school admin team did this – I had a new clinical partner and we were paired up with two other individuals whom I’d not worked with before. But what I truly believe about Warwick Medical School students is that we just get on with each other really well – put any of us together in a small group with each other and we’ll do just fine. Maybe it was the Selection Centre (the interview process) all those years ago, in which groupwork played an integral role of our assessment. Or maybe it’s just years of collaborative working together that have helped us cooperate with one another. I don’t know, but I really think that Warwick Medical School do a great job of making sure that we are able to work in any team and work well. And that’s a skill which I think will serve us all for a very long time to come.

John

Joshua Galvin : 25 Jun 2018 12:04 |  Tags: John Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem