Happy New Year!

Happy New Year

Christmas is over, and it’s time to return to hospital. I had a really nice 2 week break and got to spend some time with my family and friends, and I didn’t open a textbook or read a medical article once! I love not having exams in January.

This is my last block of “general clinical education” before finals and I am currently placed in Acute Medicine. Acute block covers Accident & Emergency and EMU, AMU or whatever acronym a hospital has chosen to call their admissions unit. We also have various lectures and simulation sessions which use SimMan mannequins to let us practice assisting at and leading various medical emergencies.

The most advanced SimMan has a pulse, breathes, can speak and make noises, and can even be sick. Oh and you can catheterise him, which gives you some idea how anatomically correct he is. In Sim sessions the SimMan is programmed to have a specific condition and reacts to the interventions that you give him, which makes it pretty realistic!

We also see real patients on Acute Block, both in ED (Emergency Department) and after admission on post take ward rounds. ED is a great place to be as a medical student as you get to see patients when they are, “fresh,” and before anybody else has influenced your thinking with their diagnosis or management plan. On the ward it’s easy to slip in some obscure differential diagnosis when you’ve heard it muttered by the registrar, you’re thinking on your own in ED!

This is the place where you can clerk patients, order tests (under supervision) and suggest what you would do next, and the place where, when things are going well, you most feel like you can and will be a doctor one day. Because it’s often so busy, juniors are more than happy for you to help out and patients are generally happy to see you as you can sometimes speed things up a little bit for them.

Acute Medicine is also a great block to finish medical school on, as you literally have no idea what will walk through the door and you have to be able to pull any focussed history or examination out of the bag, and do it well. This is different to other blocks where you know that you’re doing a cardiology ward round, so it might be a good idea to read up on cardiology…

Having spent the last 3 and a half years saying, “I will start revising properly for finals after Christmas of 4^th year,” the time has finally come. I’m sure the next few months are going to be pretty stressful, but I’m finding it satisfying to see how all the knowledge and skills I’ve learnt are slowly starting to knit together and make some sense. There is light at the end of the medical school tunnel, and I can see it now.

Megan Earle : 16 Jan 2015 14:49 |  Tags: Mbchb Newyear Patients Sarah Simman Wards Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem