Jobs!

Last week we waited in suspense for the UK foundation system to update and tell us what jobs we will be doing for the next year. Last October we applied to individual areas, and then in March we ranked all of the jobs in the area allocated to us. Our scores and job rankings were then matched, and we were then told the news that we’d all been waiting for!

I got my first choice job, which has care of the elderly and gastroenterology at a district general hospital (DGH), and then vascular surgery at the big university hospital. I’m hoping that the smaller hospitals will be better for general experience because they tend to deal with less super-specialist stuff. It’s all very well working with a surgeon who only does whipple’s procedures (or pancreaticoduodenectomy as its also known), but if you don’t have to look after a patient with pneumonia all year then that’s not very helpful!

Care of the elderly should be interesting, as elderly patients are often very complicated and have multiple health and social problems which need sorting out. I’m dreading vascular surgery as I’m not a budding surgeon, and I don’t do well in theatre. Having said that, juniors tend to spend almost all of their time on the ward looking after pre and post op patients, and hopefully in the rare event that an extra pair of hands is needed in theatre, I can send the medical student….

The job I’m most excited about (and the reason I picked this rotation), is gastroenterology. I like that gastro doctors have so many different things to look after. They do everything from the mouth to the other end (with a bit of help from the surgeons), as well as the liver and pancreas. They also help to look after diseases that affect the whole body, like inflammatory bowel disease.

Although we all had our job preferences, at the end of the day most F1 jobs are basically the same. You do three jobs over a year, you cannulate lots of people, and you do a tonne of paperwork. There are a few exciting bits in between as well. Having said that, it’s nice to know where I will be and what I’ll be doing for the next 12 months, and it’s a nice boost with 2 weeks to go before finals!

Megan Earle : 15 Apr 2015 10:17 |  Tags: Jobs Mbchb Sarah Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem