All entries for Friday 05 April 2019

The dialysis unit and a new GP

This week we visited a dialysis unit with our current consultant who is a renal (kidney) doctor. We have already attended quite a few renal clinics and seen and spoken to patients who are being prepared to have renal replacement therapy (i.e. dialysis). Dialysis is designed to replace the function of your kidneys in cleaning waste materials out of your blood and so designed to keep patients with kidney failure both safe and healthy. On average, patients come in three times a week for dialysis, with each visit lasting around 3-4 hours. It was fascinating watching the dialysis machines being set up and talk to patients undergoing the procedure while they read books and sometimes slept, all while their blood was cleaned. I had always been unaware of what dialysis really involved and whether it hurt, but for the patients we met, it was very routine and almost straight forward for them. While on the dialysis unit, they also have access to a kidney doctor, which gives them the opportunity to ask questions about their condition and/or any changes to their medications needed. This is an amazing service, as I know many dialysis units don’t have the chance to have a kidney doctor on-site in this way, so they are very lucky as a unit to have this service on site.

On Tuesday, we had our first GP day of this block. Our allocated GP surgery is in a small village in rural Worcestershire. For GP, the medical school tries to allocate us GPs nearby, but most people get one GP practice which is further afield and is a great opportunity to see how medicine is practiced in a rural GP setting. We had a relatively uneventful journey down to the surgery and were surprised when the reception staff knew exactly who we were before we even said where we were from (we must look like students!). The surgery had organised a busy timetable for us, which included two clinical sessions a day with a GP (a morning and an afternoon), and also patient home visits and governance meetings.

In the morning we were in surgery with our GP mentor, who is our overall supervisor and makes sure we are really getting the most from our placement. The patients we saw included ear and throat infections and also some management of chronic diseases such as high blood pressure. I even got a chance to practice looking into ears with the otoscope! We then had a patient home visit, which was a great excuse to visit someone in their own home and ask them about their health issues while drinking plenty of cups of tea. At lunch, we had a meeting on frailty and how these patients are identified within the practice and was fascinating as it gave us an insight into how general practice is funded – via certain clinical targets which the practice must meet to receive funding. The day was nicely rounded off by another clinical session in the afternoon, this time with a different GP. This GP was really enthusiastic to teach and did some mini-assessments on our clinical history taking and examination skills, which I’m sure will be really useful practice for when our exams come around.

On the topic of exams, these are definitely on the radar for us, despite being 4 months away. From what we have been told, more is expected of us in our second-year exams in terms of diagnosis and management, both of which are still very new skills to us. I have been gradually working my way through the presentation list (which we are examined on) and am currently about 60% done. While I am on target, I need to slightly pick up the pace to leave myself a month or so to revise at the end, so am planning a couple of long weekends in the near future to get ahead. Next week we have a week-long placement in psychiatry, which I am very excited about!

Jordan

Charlie Gallan : 05 Apr 2019 13:35 |  Tags: Jordan Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem