It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

For myself and the other 3^rdyears it’s the start of our Christmas holidays. The 2^ndyears have already had a week off, the poor first years still have a week to go and the 4^thyears are in finals revision mode! I managed to conquer the data analysis of my SSC2 project and handed my project in on time (phew!), however the work on my project doesn’t stop there. My supervisor wants us to publish which would be very exciting but this will inevitably mean more writing and more stats (boo!).

Since our 8 week project finished we have been on Advanced Cases 2 which has been a mixture of lectures and time in hospital to refresh our clinical skills before our specialist placements in January. The lectures in AC2 have mostly been revision as well as information about our upcoming specialist blocks. It’s been really exciting to hear what we will be doing in our specialist blocks but also terrifying. My last block is the Musculoskeletal block, and hearing about the OSLER (a clinical exam) we will do at the end of that block terrified me. At that point next year I’ll be 6 weeks away from finals! My first block in January is GP, which I think will be a really good introduction to all aspects of medicine and a chance to practice all my examinations and histories. The GP block is going to have dedicated teaching days which sounds really helpful and we are also going to have filmed consultations. This sounds horrible but it’s actually really helpful. You might realise that when talking to patients you are always nervously biting your lip or that you say “like” in every sentence (I can’t help myself!).watching yourself on video gives you a chance to work on these bad habits as well as identifying things that you are good at and need to keep doing. The scary thing about the GP block is the “independent consultations”. This is where my clinical partner and I will take an entire consultation with a patient and only consult the GP at the end to see if we did everything right-eek!

Also during AC2 we started working with our new CBL groups. Having been with my first CBL group for 2 years I didn’t really want to change as we all got on so well but as a Doctor you will be changing teams every 4-6months so it’s important that get used to working with different groups of people. Our first task as a new CBL group was a small presentation on complementary and alternative medicines, not everyone’s favourite topic but certainly an interesting one! Although I didn’t know the people in my new group very well we all worked well together with the help of some home baked cookies thanks to one of my new CBL colleagues!

Over the last few weeks I’ve also been busy with The Psychiatry Society as we prepared for our December event “The West Midlands Forensic Psychiatry Symposium”. We had students from Birmingham and Keele attend, and a great turnout from Warwick Students. It’s been great working with the committee on such a big event and I’m excited for our upcoming events in the new year! Working with other students on the committee from other year groups reminds me of how far I’ve come, I can’t believe I’m now a 3^rdyear medical student entering my final year of clinical placements. Here’s to 2017!!!

Joanne

Luke Pemberton : 13 Dec 2016 15:06 |  Tags: Joanne Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem