Hello Summer, Goodbye Summer

After finishing exams in June last year, I had a long summer of relaxation ahead. Starting second year with exams a whole year away, a perhaps undeserved, sense of complacency set in. Well that bubble has officially burst, this week marks the end of Core Clinical Education 3 and the start of 4 weeks’ revision, it sure is going to be a fun summer!

For CCE3 I’ve been on both Cardiology and Urology placements. Experiencing both medical and surgical specialities has been an important part of CCE. Medics and Surgeons approach both the history and examination of a patient very differently. A history and examination in a GP surgery is another beast again! I’ve really enjoyed all of our GP placements and during our CCE3 placement we also conducted an audit. Conducting audits is a required part of your foundation doctor year 1 portfolio, this means you have to complete one in order to become fully registered with the GMC and it is expected at all stages of your medical career. It’s also a good way to get involved in research and get the opportunity to present at conferences, something that some of the current third year students did at this year’s Royal College of General Practitioners Conference which was held at Warwick this year.

In CCE3 we also had the last of our T-DOCs where we learn how to perform certain clinical tasks like blood taking. At George Elliot I’ve had training on different injection techniques, where I learnt just how deep an intramuscular injection really goes, as well as catheterisation. It’s scary that we can actually do all these things, under supervision of course!

A slightly more frivolous skill for a medical student to master is being able to track down free food. As part of my GP placement we attended local training with GPs with lunch provided. I also got invited to an Endocrinology Seminar after sitting in on the Diabetes clinic where one of the F1s gave a talk about common endocrine emergencies (great revision for me!) and again lunch was provided. Perhaps the best free food I’ve had was at a dinner at a local hotel organised by local psychiatrists to learn about a new antipsychotic with an internationally renowned speaker. While all these occasions involved a free meal they also involved extra and unexpected teaching and networking opportunities. If you get involved and take advantage of all the opportunities available in hospital many more find their way to you, this I think is the take home message from CCE. You can only learn so much from lectures and books, you need to be out there on the wards, in clinics, in theatre. You might not be interested in everything you see but being out there and visible to your seniors is worth it for the extra opportunities that find you along the way. I really have enjoyed the last 30 weeks in hospital where I have gone from a nervous student who fainted in her first week on the wards to a fully-fledged clinical medical student who goes up to any patient and asks to take a history, who takes blood and puts in cannulas for the F1s, who even scrubs in on surgery! It’s sad to be leaving hospital now and entering revision hibernation mode but I will hopefully speak to you all again when I am officially a 3rd year medical student-keep your fingers crossed for me!

Joanne

Megan Earle : 04 Aug 2016 15:19 |  Tags: Joanne Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem