All entries for Wednesday 18 March 2015

Exams approaching!

With one week left of our musculoskeletal block before our Easter holidays you would think I would feel more excited. I’m looking forward to a break, catching up with friends and family but I am also acutely aware that I need to revise. I need to revise like I never have before because after the Easter holidays we have our final block (reproduction and child health) and then we have our summative exams. I’ve never had a final exam that tested me on everything before, my previous degree, A levels and even GCSEs were mostly modular so to say I’m nervous is an understatement! One of the biggest things about Warwick is that the focus on group work really does come into its own at this time of year. In my CBL group we have started to do lots of quiz’s and practice questions which is really helpful, we all have slightly different styles so it’s great to try other peoples questions.

Despite my nerves around exams I am looking forward to our Reproduction and Child health block after Easter. We had our final patient visit in the community this week where we met a child with a heath condition and their family. This case was really different to anything else we have seen in the community or in hospital, for a start our patient was too young for us to really talk to so we got most of our information from the parents and health visitors that work with the family. With younger patients the focus on supporting the family as a whole rather than treating the patient in isolation really struck me. Paediatrics is definitely an area I am interested in so I’m looking forward to learning more about it next block.

Another area I’m interested in is psychiatry. The Psychiatry Society here at Warwick have organised a buddy scheme where interested students get paired with a psychiatry trainee. I had my first meeting with my buddy where I got to ask lots of questions while enjoying tea and cake. Hopefully I will be able to shadow my buddy in the summer and also help out in an audit to get more experience in this area-the CV building never ends in medicine!

The list of possible OSCE stations for our summative exam was released this week which was slightly panic inducing and to top it off we were learning how to break bad news in clinical skills this week – not the easiest task! Practicing with a patient actor was really tough as our medical knowledge is still so limited so knowing what to say about diagnosis/prognosis is still a long way off but what we can do is make patents feel listened to and point them in the right direction for questions we can’t answer. Once we are on the wards more next year we might get asked some difficult questions so any practice we can get before then is a bonus!

Elections for MedSoc have also been taking place this week, candidates have been posting you tube videos of their manifestos (worth googling!) and have been bribing us all with cakes which is always welcome! I also managed to visit Warwick Castle for the first time since I moved here 7 months ago – better late than never and I very much enjoyed a well-deserved afternoon off!

Megan Earle : 18 Mar 2015 10:25 |  Tags: Exams Joanne Mbchb Warwick Warwickcastle |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem