General Practice and Surgical Skills

We’ve had quite a few clinical skills labs recently, and this week we’ve had labs on fundoscopy and then a workshop on suturing. Fundoscopy also called (ophthalmoscopy) is shining a light into the eye to look at the retina (at the back of the eye) to check the blood vessels and look for changes which could be caused, for example, by diabetes. Although it sounds easy in principle, as I quickly found out in the skills lab, it is not!

At first I couldn’t see anything. I’ve been told that it takes years of practice to master this skill, and I’m sure it will take this long as all I could see was redness... The second clinical skills lab I had was suturing, which is essentially sewing up a wound. I’ve done a little bit of this before, so it wasn’t completely new to me, as my partner brought me a suturing kit from the internet last Christmas. (would recommend as a relaxation tool, practising your suturing while watching TV…) The session was facilitated by a surgical nurse practitioner and a surgeon, which was great to get tips from the people who do it multiple times a day! Practice makes perfect, and we have further teaching on suturing and surgical skills in future years, so it was good to be introduced to this skill at an early stage in our careers.

Recently, I have been thinking more and more about what direction I want my career to take post-graduation, and even what specialty I want to end up in. As a second year, graduation is still some way away, but in two year’s time, we will have finished finals and be waiting to start our first job as qualified doctors. When I first started the course, most of my work experience was in acute medicine – so I thought I wanted to work in A&E, Intensive Care of Anaesthetics. I have enjoyed my placements in these areas but I have also been surprised at how much I have enjoyed General Practice too. I think that my personality is well suited to a generalist specialty, where you might be seeing a heart patient one moment and a baby the next. I get bored easily and think I would struggle in a speciality without this variety. General Practice has been fantastic so far, and I have really loved the chance to see so many interesting cases and practice my examination skills. I also love the fact that you build up a rapport with patients and get to know them and their stories, and hopefully see a good outcome for them in the end. I’d never considered it before, but I think GP may be for me, although time will tell whether I still feel this way in two year’s time. Putting this down in writing I may look back on this and wince at how I end up not doing this at all, but these are my thoughts at the current moment.

Jordan

Charlie Gallan : 07 May 2019 10:05 |  Tags: Jordan Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem