Getting Stuck into the Acute Block

We’re in the middle of the acute block and it is really living up to its vaunted reputation. I am having a great time and learning a lot, and it seems like everyone in my rotation is having similar experiences. My clinical partner and I are lucky because most of our teaching and shadowing sessions are at a very large regional hospital; this appears to mean that we see lots of injuries and presentations that wouldn’t normally go to a regional hospital. There is a lot of trauma and some fairly serious acute medical presentations, and we get to see a lot of very interesting and cool things.

I’ve found that we are really encouraged to get involved once we tell the A&E staff that we are students, and this is a huge advantage of the acute block and being so far advanced in our careers as students. When we’ve been observing/helping out in A&E, most of our time is split between A&E minors (where people present with not-very-acute conditions) A&E majors (where people come for acute and serious but not life-threatening presentations) and A&E resus, which is geared toward stabilising patients, saving their lives and initiating immediate management before passing them along to more appropriate parts of the hospital.

Each area has its positives: the minors area is the least hectic and stressful of the three, which means that when we see patients here, we can spend more time focusing on their presenting complaint without the added pressure of it becoming urgent very quickly. In the majors area, the energy level is really high, and there are loads of doctors around, so as students we get support as soon as we need it and clinical contact all the time. And the resus area gives us the opportunity to see the bare face of medicine, where people’s lives need to be saved immediately. Both my clinical partner and I have seen some really eye-opening trauma in resus – let’s just say that I am absolutely never, ever getting on a motorbike in my life.

I feel that we’re lucky because our acute block is coming rather late in Phase III (much luckier than had it been our first rotation, for instance). It being so late has equipped us to consolidate a lot of the medical knowledge that we’ve built over the phase and indeed over the preceding years, and we also have a lot more confidence speaking to patients and getting straight to the point about what information needs to be uncovered. Unlike lots of other degrees, basically everything that we’ve learned throughout our time in medical school (especially a lot of the anatomy and physiology from Phase I) is relevant at all parts. The vocational nature of the degree means that everything is applicable at all times – we were quizzed the other day on the mechanism of action of bronchodilators, which we learned in November of our first year! In any event, the acute block has exceeded my expectations, and I am seriously considering a career in emergency medicine because of it

Joshua Galvin : 22 Dec 2017 10:09 |  Tags: John Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem