New Year, New Block

After the end of Block 2 my fellow first years and I were desperately in need of a break. I spent the first two weeks catching up on some work, albeit at a much more leisurely pace. It was hard work to motivate myself to do work over the holidays initially but I made some revision notes which will save me lots of time in the Easter holidays and I feel much more organised and prepared for this new block.

After the first two weeks though I decided it was time for a real Christmas break and just gave myself time to relax and enjoy myself! The first semester didn’t allow much time for catching up with family or friends so I really made the most of my time, visited old colleagues in Scotland, caught up with friends and family from Home and even squeezed in a romantic get away with my boyfriend at New Year. I started this Block feeling very relaxed and pleased with myself as I had even managed to do the pre reading but after only 1 week it’s like our 4 week Christmas break never happened!

Our first week of Brain and Behaviour has been pretty full on to say the least. My background is in neuroscience so it’s not all new to me but it’s still a lot of information to take in at once. I love studying the brain, the anatomy is incredible and the disorders very interesting. In our Friday clinical skills session we were all wielding our tuning forks and testing each others reflexes, which was lots of fun and reminded me that medicine isn’t just about lectures and late nights studying.

As well as starting our new block we’ve also had another community day this week. I really enjoy our community days; it’s really interesting to see how healthcare works out in the community especially with people with long term conditions. I feel privileged that people invite us into their homes and tell us all about themselves and they do this just to help us!

We have also been assigned to our hospital based placements for clinical skills. I’m really looking forward to this but also terrified of performing clinical examinations in front of our clinical tutors!

I should probably focus my terror more on our upcoming formative OSCE, this is a mini practice version of our clinical exam in the summer. We have to complete 6 stations testing different clinical skills such as history taking or a respiratory exam, sounds tricky doesn’t it, then factor in the fact that each station is only 7minutes long=PANIC! I’m feeling quite nervous but hopefully over the next few weeks my friends will be willing subjects for me to practice on - one of the many perils of been friends with a medical student, another important one being inappropriate dinner conversation - something to work on over the next 4 years!

Megan Earle : 02 Feb 2015 16:27 |  Tags: Joanne Mbchb Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem