All entries for Friday 18 October 2019

Back to Teaching!

People who have read my blog before will know that peer teaching is something I am very passionate about and something I am keen to do at every opportunity. So far, I have found the SSC2 project period to be much lighter in terms of timetable so I’ve had much more free time to get involved with teaching again. This week I have returned to teaching Student Seminars and I have also resumed Basic Life Support teaching.

Student Seminars are hugely important to the Warwick experience and are something that makes WMS very special indeed. Student Seminars are where second- and third-year medical students teach first year students on topics which the first years have found difficult from that week’s teaching. The topics are picked by the first years and then the second- or third-year teachers prepare sessions which break down the topic into manageable chunks and talk through especially important or challenging parts of the topic. When I was in first year, I went to seminars every week, and while I was in second year I taught seminars every week. Now that I’m in third year, I am keen to continue and do some teaching for the current second year students. This week I taught on the pharmacology of anti-arrhythmia drugs which is not an easy topic but not too challenging, especially as I spent a year working in pharmacy before starting medicine.

This Monday I also restarted teaching Basic Life Support (BLS). Last year, about 10 Warwick students got the chance to become trained BLS instructors. BLS is the cornerstone of First Aid in that it trains you to approach a causality, assess their airway and consciousness and then give chest compressions and rescue breaths to potentially save their life. As I’m sure you can imagine, BLS is a critical skill for medical students to gain as it provides such a basis for so many other skills and gives them the confidence to potentially save someone’s life if necessary. At Birmingham Medical School, these essential BLS skills are taught by senior medical students and this model has been commended nationally as an example of excellent practice. Thus, Warwick Medical School decided to implement a similar programme, which gives Medical students the essential BLS skills and also gives the teachers an incredible opportunity to gain teaching skills. As I may have mentioned above, I’m sort of keen on teaching……so I thought I’d love to get involved! Last year I qualified as a BLS instructor, able to teach the course and then this year we decided to run courses to train the new first year medical students. Just in case you’ve never done BLS before, here are the main steps [Split into the handy mnemonic DR ABC]:

D – Danger: check for danger in the surrounding environment. Approach if safe to do so.

R – Response: ask the casualty if they are okay and if their eyes are closed as them to open them. Are they alert or unresponsive?

[Call for help at this point]

A – Airway. Do head tilt chin lift to OPEN the airway.

B – Breathing - LOOK, LISTEN and FEEL for breathing. If not breathing call an ambulance and start chest compressions and rescue breaths.

C – Circulation – are there any signs of bleeding? Treat bleeding if present.

I would highly recommend that if you’ve never done BLS before for you to attend a course if you can. BLS, performed successfully and early on can save a life, and it doesn’t matter whether you are in a medical career or not. Courses are available as part of your workplace if you become a workplace first aider, if you decide to become a first aid volunteer or through various other sources. Get trained if you can!

Eden Villiers : 18 Oct 2019 13:45 |  Tags: Jordan Mbchb Patients Student Wards Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem