Extra Extra…

From bedside teaching in first year, through advanced cases 1 in second year, and now as a fully-fledged clinical medical student I have always been based at Warwick Hospital. Warwick is a small hospital with a small A&E department. You start to recognize familiar faces in the corridor and bump into other students regularly.

With our first 10 week block coming to an end that’s all about to change as myself and my fellow students at Warwick prepare for Core clinical education 2 at UHCW. UHCW is a major trauma centre and a much bigger hospital, the chances of me getting lost are very high! Students at UHCW and George Elliot will all be moving onto their next placement too and I don’t think I’m the only one feeling a bit nervous having got used to how one hospital works.

Having survived CCE1 my history taking and examination skills have greatly improved and I’m starting to think more like a doctor. Formulating a differential diagnosis and thinking about investigations in a systematic way. I can take blood, insert cannulas and take arterial blood gases (which helps the junior doctors greatly so they have more time to teach!). I’ve got used to just going up to people, introducing myself and asking what they do and if I can come with them-being a bit pushy as a medical student seems to be a skill in itself.

Apart from more practice in different clinical specialties I have a few start of block resolutions. One is to teach in Peer support. I benefitted greatly as a first year student so really want to be able to give back and help out the current first years. The other resolution is slightly contradictory but it is to do LESS!

There is so much extra teaching and events on at Medical school it’s easy to get a bit carried away. In the last few weeks I have attended a suturing workshop run by the Surgical Society. This was a great event, we were taught using pig skin in the Surgical Training Centre at UHCW by current surgical trainees. Getting the chance to learn different types of suturing techniques was really fun and learning in such a small group meant you had lots of time to practice.

I also attended an Airway Management session run by the Trauma and Emergency Medicine Society. As a medical student you might think we won’t be managing airways but you would be wrong. My first day in theatre with an anesthetist and I found myself managing an airway and administering oxygen at the same time!

Another interesting evening was spent watching 3^rd year students studying an optional SSC in Medical Education give presentations on various medical topics. Seeing the different teaching styles was very interesting and was a great opportunity to learn more about the medical education course that I would really like to take part in next year.

A slightly more nerve wracking evening was at an event that I had organised with the Psychiatry Society. I organised for the President of the Royal College to come to Warwick as part of his tour of UK Medical Schools. The event was a great success, we had a really interesting talk accompanied by delicious M&S snacks and we had a good turn out from our members.

Despite really enjoying all these events I definitely need to find a better balance between extra things, study and time to relax! So this is something I’m going to work on going forward into CCE2.

Joanne

Megan Earle : 21 Mar 2016 09:24 |  Tags: Joanne Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem