Core Clinical Education Begins

I wrote my last blog at the start of the Christmas holidays as I eagerly awaited the start of Core clinical education (or CCE). As usual I had grand plans for work and preparation over the Christmas holiday and as usual they never materialized. Getting ready for hospital on the first Monday back I was starting to worry about my chilled out holiday but after two weeks in hospital I’m glad I took the time to relax and recuperate before clinical life hit me! These past few weeks have been intense to say the least but definitely worth the wait.

CCE is the first fully clinical phase of the course here at Warwick, the next 30 weeks are split into 10 week blocks, each at a different hospital. I’m starting at Warwick Hospital which is a small district hospital. My base ward is a Respiratory Ward but in my timetable I also have time on the surgery, paediatrics and special baby care wards. Each hospital organizes tutorials on specific topics and we have lots more clinical skills to learn. In my first block I’m going to learn how to insert cannulas and perform Arterial blood gas measurements. It may seem scary to be learning all these clinical skills but once we can do them we can help out on the wards and get lots of practice in a safe environment. Much better than waiting till exam time!

I’ve been spending a lot of time with the junior doctors, some of which are only in their first year. Despite how busy they are they always have time to teach. After taking a history and examining a patient they are happy to sit down and talk through the case, show me the imaging results and teach on tricky topics. I’ve learnt so much from just these short sessions. I suppose that shows you that no number of lectures on lung function and pathology will help you understand unless you see it for yourself with the patient in front of you.

We’ve also had our first day with our community practice. We will be spending 3 days of every block in the community, learning about chronic illness management and how healthcare interventions are implemented in primary care. These community days complement our time in GP which I am really looking forward to. Some of us have also attended our psychiatry placement induction. Later in the year we will all have a 4 day placement in psychiatry and to prepare us for this we had a clinical skills day in psychiatry where we got to practice history taking with actors in a number of scenarios which ranged from an acute psychotic episode to chronic fatigue syndrome. I found this session really helpful as a psychiatry history is a very different skill, one which I’m looking forward to putting into practice.

My body hasn’t quite adjusted to the change in pace and finding time study in between all of our placements is tricky but it was all the clinical stuff that made me want to come back to study medicine so while I may be very tired I know it’s worth it!

Joanne

Megan Earle : 25 Jan 2016 15:08 |  Tags: Hospital Joanne Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem