All entries for Thursday 12 February 2015

What’s wrong with your bear?

Well it’s the end of another block, so that’s three down, only two more to go before my first year exams. Block 3, Brain and Behaviour, has been a really enjoyable block for me as I have a background in neuroscience.

I have still found it really tough though, despite my background this course is very clinically focused from very early on. This means that we are already interpreting scans and learning drug names and mechanisms of action - not my strongest skills at the moment after only 5 months of Medical school. This early exposure to clinical scenarios and cases is one of the reasons why I love the course at Warwick but it is a totally different approach to my previous degree which does take some getting used to!

This early clinical focus means that right from the first week we are working on our clinical skills. At first it’s in small groups at our Friday hospital sessions, then it’s with individual patients in their homes on our community days and now we are actually putting those skills into practice with patients on the wards during our hospital placements.

In order to develop our clinical skills further we are always receiving feedback from our tutors and our peers but last week we went one step further by recording ourselves during a history consultation. We were all filmed individually taking a history from an actor; we then received feedback from the rest of the small group (who are watching you doing the consultation!) and from a GP facilitator. I was so nervous waiting for my turn but actually received really good feedback from my group.

Watching the video back again I can hardly believe it’s me (I’m sure I don’t sound that squeaky!). Getting the right body language and right questions are skills that we are still developing but it’s great to see how much progress I have made in such a short space of time.

This week I was also pleased to find out that I had passed all the stations in my formative OSCE. An OSCE is not something many people have experience with, you have ten minutes per station (7mins task, 3mins feedback) then the alarm goes and you leave and read the instructions on the door of the next room until the alarm goes again and you start the next task. It’s quite a nerve wracking experience so I’m very relieved that I passed and I feel more prepared for the summative OSCE in the summer.

Sometimes it may not seem it but there is time for fun as a first year medical student, I have started to volunteer with Teddy Bear Hospital, a society that works with young children to teach them about health and hospitals. We have stations about exercise, healthy eating, when to call 999 and also a station where the kids can put bandages and casts on their Teddies. I helped out with a group of Beavers and after an hour dealing with thirty hyperactive 6 years olds Medical school looked a lot easier!

Joanne

Megan Earle : 12 Feb 2015 10:55 |  Tags: Joanne Mbchb Student Teddybearhospital Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem