All entries for Thursday 21 February 2019

New Block New Me

So, the beginning of February brought the end of block three and the beginning of block four. I felt a little sad as I really had enjoyed block three and it had cemented for me the reason of why I want to pursue neuro as a career. I had really enjoyed the labs with the last one recording EEG measurements. This was basically an excuse to nap of the floor of the lab for half an hour …. I gladly took that sacrifice for my team. However, it had to come to an end and we now are on block 4…. The penultimate block before the E word of which our Anatomy Professor has already mentioned once.

I am enjoying the content of the block, but it is taking me A LOT longer to pick things up, even in the anatomy side of things which is normally my strong point. The lower limbs are surprisingly complicated but all it is going to take is some hard work and I’m sure it will click in the end …. Hopefully. It is proving to be a weirdly entertaining block however as so far in lectures we have been standing up holding our own bums (demonstrating gluteus maximus), dragging each other standing up (demonstrating the sliding filament theory) and everyone is performing weird movements in the anatomy labs. Something tells me that I will be able to tell if any block 4 questions are being answered in the exam room.

We also had to submit our first written work this week which was our community day reflections. I found this hard because I had to essentially reflect on a conversation I had with a patient as part of a group. If you have ever tried to reflect on a conversation before you can probably see where I am coming from. It felt strange and for someone who must work at communication more than most (I have Asperger’s) it was a challenge to know what to write about. However, there was plenty of support and I did my best so hopefully it gets a pass. We also started another written assignment this week which was the case reports. Essentially, we have to find a patient and write their presentation up and submit it to our clinical tutor. We had an SDL session for this where we could go around the hospital at will, find a ward, find a patient and write up what we find. Terrifying for a first year. What if the ward does not want to let us in? What if the patient is too complicated? What if no doctors want anything to do with you? These were all the thoughts racing through my mind on Tuesday but Maariyah and I braved it alone and ended up on the cardio ward. The nurse we met was lovely and thankfully Maariyah did most of the initial talking as I was too nervous to put words into my own mouth. I relaxed a bit after we found a patient and I enjoyed looking through notes to build up what we knew about the patient and getting to talk and examine a patient without supervision. I’ve said it before but moments like this where all the work you do outside of the hospital comes into its own. It is also nice for the old self esteem as you realise how much you have picked up (even though you think you haven’t learnt anything) since you started.

I am also making sure I take a break from medicine and it’s in the form of my own blog that I am rather proud of. It’s developing slowly and I also use it to take stock on what I have done every week by writing a bit of a weekly summary. I looked at week one the other day and (after getting over how excited I was) it really did hit home how far we have come since those naive days in September. I also got some messages this week from people I had given advice to throughout the application cycles saying they had got into Warwick! This really did make me happy as I liked the fact, I may have had some small input to helping them.

Looking towards the E word, I really do need to start learning the drugs list (sorry WMS I haven’t started it yet). However, I had a bit of an epiphany moment when I woke up this morning (because what else are Saturday mornings for) and I realised that I know most of the drugs by what their packaging looks like as I worked as a dispenser for over a year, so why not put that to use?!

It’s the little things that keep you going ….

Abbie

Charlie Gallan : 21 Feb 2019 13:45 |  Tags: Abbie Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem