All entries for Monday 23 March 2020

Resuscitation and COVID–19…

It’s only been 2 weeks since my last blog, but it feels like a lifetime in so many ways! Coronavirus has gone from a distant virus circulating in China to the main news story every day and a major concern for everyone.

Starting with last week, I had a shift at the UHCW A&E Resuscitation department on Saturday night. This is where the really sick patients come in to be stabilised before they move on to other areas of the hospital. These patients have a variety of serious conditions including sepsis, major pneumonias, major trauma, major bleeds, heart attacks etc. I really enjoyed this shift and how fast paced the work was. The patients are “big sick” and the job of resus is to treat them as quickly as possible, stabilise them and send them to the wards/theatre etc. The doctor who was supervising me was great and encouraged me to go and talk to patients, put in cannulas and take bloods, all of which I managed to do! It really built my confidence to be able to actually be useful and help the team, rather than the ever-present feeling of just being a burden as a medical student. I also got a chance to practice and perfect some airway manoeuvres, which are skills that are difficult to practice apart from in a Resuscitation environment. One of these is called the jaw thrust and involves pushing the jaw forward to keep the airway open while holding an oxygen mask over the patient’s face. You then have to monitor the oxygen and carbon dioxide in their blood to make sure you are oxygenating them successfully. Although this was daunting, I had lots of support, teaching and supervision from the very talented staff in Resus and managed to do this successfully.

I really wanted to avoid talking about coronavirus/COVID-19, but it’s impossible to do when it has had such a big impact on everything, so I thought I would update you from a medical student’s perspective. What is happening depends on which medical school you are at, but for third years at Warwick (i.e. me!), there has been little change. Overall, from this week the first years are being taught online/via lecture recordings, the second years are off placement and we are continuing until we finish this block in one week’s time. I think the thinking behind this is that our specialist placements are very time limited because they run until December and then we have finals, so there isn’t much time to make up for any lost teaching. Completing this block means that if there is any future disruption, at least we have this block completed and banked. I am glad we are still on Acute block as I have enjoyed it so far and it is an important one overall.

I think the next few months will be very challenging based on the news, but I also think it’s important to make sure that we look after one another and reach out to any members of our community that are vulnerable and may need extra support. There has been talk in the news of medical students supporting the NHS, but I think that is more the current final years as they are more useful clinically and can help with some basic jobs. What about us? Well, there has been some talk online about junior medical students maybe helping with babysitting NHS staff member’s children and odd jobs to help out but I haven’t heard anything officially. I will keep you posted!

Hattie Trigg : 23 Mar 2020 08:58 |  Tags: Jordan Mbchb Patients Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem