All entries for January 2018
January 16, 2018
Revision as far as the eye can see
At the end of 2017, we completed our year of Specialist Clinical Placements, which for us was marked by the end of the Psychiatry block, which I actually enjoyed far more than I thought I would. It wasn’t until we’d got to the end of the year, though, that we’d realised how quickly it had flown by! Forty-eight weeks of fifty (with just two weeks off in August) is really hard going, no matter who you are. I always had more time off than that when I was working. At least over Christmas, most of us had some time to relax and some good excuses to be a little lazy. I had the chance to spend some time out of the UK for a couple of weeks, and I’m really glad that I did – it helped me appreciate the West Midlands much more when I got back, and I really needed a change of perspective.
Our final exams start in just over a month, and it’s really difficult to believe that they’re almost upon us. I don’t quite know what to expect. I’ve sat Phase I and Phase II exams (of course) and they’ve been… tough but not impossible. Phase I was relatively straightforward as the content was (mostly) presented to us throughout the course of the year; the pace and the volume was a huge struggle, but it was obviously not entirely insurmountable. I personally found Phase II exams to be a lot more unexpected in content and nature than Phase I, but thankfully they’re behind me and my cohort now. I think (and truly hope) that as long as each of us has kept up with our work throughout the year and has maintained a consistent stream of work over each block, we should hopefully be OK when it comes time to put pen to paper for the Phase III exams.
We have already sat the Safe Prescribing Assessment, a Warwick requirement to graduate (although not, as I understand it, a GMC requirement). Now it’s just a matter of waiting for results and dealing with the consequences, whatever they may be. The prescribing exam tests our ability to interpret instructions given to us by using the British National Formulary (a huge compendium manual covering basically every single drug available to be legally prescribed by healthcare professionals in the UK) and transcribing them onto mock drug kardexes (they resemble drug charts for patients in hospital) and discharge letters. It sounds straightforward but it’s a lot more complicated than one would initially expect. I know that many people, including me, found the exam really tricky.
It’s really important that we med students also look after our physical and mental health. It’s really easy to get in the habit of burying our nose in a book for 12-15 hours per day. But I have been forcing myself to do things like swim and take walks around the neighbourhood. I find it much more efficient to work after I’ve cleared my head, and swimming also helps me sleep better at night so that I’m less sluggish during the day. Is it a winning formula? I’ll know the answer to that in a couple of short months!
John
Joshua Galvin
16 Jan 2018 12:11
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January 03, 2018
The End of The Block…
After what feels like the longest year that most of us can remember, we are finally done with our last block of the Specialist Clinical Placements. It’s hard to believe that from now on, it’s all going to be revision and clinical apprenticeships (presuming finals success…). I’m glad that we ended with the Psychiatry block, however, as it allowed us to focus on an area of medicine that we don’t see very much of outside of psychiatry, and hopefully having this block so late will keep the information fresh for our upcoming exams.
Our last week of Psychiatry involved more time spent in an acute-ward setting, and enabled us to see far more presentations of common psychiatric conditions, including Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder, severe Generalised Anxiety Disorder and many other fascinating presentations. We were also able to see another assessment under the Mental Health Act, something which is taken very seriously (for obvious reasons) and is very thorough and complete. I’m glad that so much effort is put in place to safeguard patients who might not be in a safe mental state to manage their own mental-health conditions, and it’s good that the process is so robust and observed so closely. There really is a lot of legal scrutiny for the process of detaining patients in hospital, and every professional I have worked with has agreed that this is entirely appropriate.
Looking back on 2017, it’s really amazing to think of how much ground we have actually covered; there is so much that I didn’t know at the start of the year but have picked up throughout the course of the year through many different means: we’ve had large-group teaching, small-group teaching, one-on-one teaching, ward-based exposure and of course loads of self-study. My notes, however, are a complete horror show and I could easily spend the majority of the next two months just reorganising and getting everything into shape! But of course we don’t have time for that right now. It’s all about accessing, revising and hopefully committing to memory all of the information that we’ve learned over the past three-and-a-half years. The task is daunting, but I think we’ve climbed steeper hills (first year, I’m looking at you). My main goal for the first day of revision is to at least get everything on one disk drive!
Now that we are done with our last Specialist Clinical Placement, most of our cohort are now off on Christmas break – which will be nice, but of course we will have the additional spectre of upcoming final exams looming over our heads. I’m looking forward to leaving the UK for a couple of weeks – Coventry is lovely, but I think I need a change of scenery to keep from going mad – and hopefully some slightly warmer weather and creature comforts will be the perfect environment to start my revision.
John
Joshua Galvin
03 Jan 2018 09:12
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