All entries for January 2015

Happy New Year!

I always think that the Christmas holidays go so much quicker than any other. It’s always filled with the last minute rush of present buying, visiting all the family, and of course eating too much. Then you have your New Year’s Eve celebrations and that’s it – it’s all over until next year. But we were fortunate to have a whole 4 weeks off for Christmas this year, and therefore I can’t complain too much. We also didn’t have any exams to revise for, or work that particularly needed doing so if you wanted to have a proper break you could. I had been intending on going over last terms lectures and things ready for next term but instead made the most of being able to earn some money and have a bit of a rest!

We start our Core Clinical Education block when we return, and this I am very much looking forward to. We will have 3 rotations within the block and I am fortunate enough to get to have time at three of the hospitals – Warwick, UHCW and George Eliot. During each rotation we will experience different specialities, such as cardiology, respiratory and haematology. We will spend one day a week in GP or out in the community like we did last year. We will also then have every other Friday back in uni where we will have lectures and continue our CBL work.

I am a little nervous about how I am going to adjust my learning to the clinical environment but getting to spend the last few weeks of term in the hospitals and chatting to the older years has helped. We have also picked our clinical partners and having the opportunity to choose someone that you know you work well with has been great. I am with someone from my CBL group, and so we have worked a lot together before. I also know that she is great at calming me down when I get stressed!

We also have the winter ball to look forward to when we return. I went to both the winter and summer balls last year, and both were great fun. It’s always nice to have an excuse to dress up! This year it’s masquerade, and there will be face painting again – you’re never too old to have your face painted and especially not when you get to add glitter and gems to match!

It will be strange not being in uni as often, although I’m sure the first years will enjoy having the building to themselves! But getting to spend more time in hospital will be great, and I hope it will help me to put everything together and apply what I’ve been taught more easily. I will let you know how it goes!

Megan Earle : 29 Jan 2015 11:07 |  Tags: Mbchb Newyear Rachel Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Choosing your elective – UK or otherwise…

Although my elective was a few months ago now, I thought I would write a post about it, as I did an elective in the UK.

A medical elective is a period of time spent in a different medical environment to our usual hospital exposure. At Warwick it is 6 weeks long, and comes at the end of the third year. The traditional medical elective was usually to somewhere with a less developed healthcare system than the UK, to help out and to gain an appreciation of the NHS. However, nowadays people go all over the world, from the Caribbean to America to Nepal and to Africa. Having said that, a growing minority choose to do an elective in the UK. This can be for financial or family reasons, or just because you’re interested in something that the UK is the best place to experience.

I think I’d like to be a gastroenterologist, so I arranged an elective at the QE hospital in Birmingham, which is the regional centre for liver transplantation. I spent 6 weeks with the team there, helping the juniors out where I could and also meeting patients with advanced and complicated liver disease which you just don’t see outside specialist centres.

My elective really helped to build my confidence, and it was great to see how a hospital in a different trust worked. My clinical partner did his elective here in Coventry in pre-hospital and emergency medicine, and he got to go out with ambulance teams, the major incident response team and a whole load of other pre-hospital teams, as well as seeing patients in A&E. I like my patients in a warm, dry and relatively predictable environment so that is one of my worst nightmares but if you’re into that sort of thing then it’s a pretty amazing thing to do!

My boyfriend’s elective was also at home, in Intensive Care. He did a research elective so he planned and implemented his own research project and managed to convert his time there into a couple of presentations (one in Barcelona, which I went along to for “support” – it’s a hard life) and some publications, which look great for his CV.

Doing electives at home also meant that we had enough money to go to Thailand for 3 weeks over summer – where we didn’t have to set foot in a hospital or do any work at all. I feel like I managed to get the best of both worlds there!

I would really recommend thinking about your elective during the first few years at medical school. If you really want to go abroad, then start saving and go for it. But with the increase in tuition fees and competition for specialist training as stiff as ever, a UK elective can be both a financially and professionally savvy move.

Megan Earle : 26 Jan 2015 10:11 |  Tags: Electives Mbchb Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

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) |  Close comments |  Report a problem