All entries for March 2015

Looking back

After one week of my Easter holidays I’ve drank a year’s supply of tea and got a reasonable amount of work done. However when you realise that the only time you’ve left the house in 3 days is to put the bins out you know you’re working too hard! One of the reasons why I choose to return to university to study medicine was that I wanted a job where I wanted to work hard, I wanted to be so interested, and care so much that it wouldn’t matter how much effort it required. Now that I’m here I think maybe you can have too much of a good thing but I’m also glad that even after all the hard work that I’ve put in this year and the hard work still to come I can still enjoy learning and all the other experiences that come with medicine.

Over the holidays a lot of the medical school will be closed for the selection centres, and while I’ve been working from home in my pyjamas I’ve been thinking about my own experience at the selection centre last year. I was lucky to actually turn up on time to my selection centre, having stayed in a B&B in Kenilworth I laid out my clothes and had everything ready only to wake up in a blind panic realising I had forgot to set my alarm! Fortunately my nerves woke me up at 6am and I was actually an hour early, and had plenty of time to nervously chat with my fellow candidates. Interviews are always nerve wracking but having only had experience of panel interviews I definitely felt like the Warwick selection centre at Warwick was a leap into the unknown. The selection centre has changed since last year but I’m sure the candidates are just as nervous as I was.

Applying to medicine is like no other experience. For many applicants going through their 2nd, 3rd or 4th round of applications there are a lot of hopes and dreams on the line. Many have left successful careers to get work experience, or missed out on an offer first time round and undertook a tough science degree in order to meet the entry requirements. Myself I spent most of the application process wondering if I had made the right choice. Having studied hard for my PhD, secured a postdoctoral role in a different country deciding to apply to medicine meant that here wasn’t really any going back. Using my holidays to do work experience, volunteering on a hospital ward after an already long day at work and revising for the UKCAT on a weekend and all for at best a 1 in 10 chance of actually being accepted felt like a big gamble. After the assessment centre as I analysed everything I had said and done I realised for the first time just how much I wanted to get in and that it didn’t matter what I was giving up or the risk I was taking.

Now that I’m revising for my first summative exam of my medicine degree I can honestly say I made the right choice. I’ve doubted it many times but if I can actually say that I’m still enjoying learning new things while cooped up revising for exams then I must have made the right choice! Despite this realisation I think I should still make the effort to go outside for things that don’t involve waste disposal!

Megan Earle : 25 Mar 2015 11:24 |  Tags: Exams Joanne Mbchb Selectioncentres Warwick |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Exams approaching!

With one week left of our musculoskeletal block before our Easter holidays you would think I would feel more excited. I’m looking forward to a break, catching up with friends and family but I am also acutely aware that I need to revise. I need to revise like I never have before because after the Easter holidays we have our final block (reproduction and child health) and then we have our summative exams. I’ve never had a final exam that tested me on everything before, my previous degree, A levels and even GCSEs were mostly modular so to say I’m nervous is an understatement! One of the biggest things about Warwick is that the focus on group work really does come into its own at this time of year. In my CBL group we have started to do lots of quiz’s and practice questions which is really helpful, we all have slightly different styles so it’s great to try other peoples questions.

Despite my nerves around exams I am looking forward to our Reproduction and Child health block after Easter. We had our final patient visit in the community this week where we met a child with a heath condition and their family. This case was really different to anything else we have seen in the community or in hospital, for a start our patient was too young for us to really talk to so we got most of our information from the parents and health visitors that work with the family. With younger patients the focus on supporting the family as a whole rather than treating the patient in isolation really struck me. Paediatrics is definitely an area I am interested in so I’m looking forward to learning more about it next block.

Another area I’m interested in is psychiatry. The Psychiatry Society here at Warwick have organised a buddy scheme where interested students get paired with a psychiatry trainee. I had my first meeting with my buddy where I got to ask lots of questions while enjoying tea and cake. Hopefully I will be able to shadow my buddy in the summer and also help out in an audit to get more experience in this area-the CV building never ends in medicine!

The list of possible OSCE stations for our summative exam was released this week which was slightly panic inducing and to top it off we were learning how to break bad news in clinical skills this week – not the easiest task! Practicing with a patient actor was really tough as our medical knowledge is still so limited so knowing what to say about diagnosis/prognosis is still a long way off but what we can do is make patents feel listened to and point them in the right direction for questions we can’t answer. Once we are on the wards more next year we might get asked some difficult questions so any practice we can get before then is a bonus!

Elections for MedSoc have also been taking place this week, candidates have been posting you tube videos of their manifestos (worth googling!) and have been bribing us all with cakes which is always welcome! I also managed to visit Warwick Castle for the first time since I moved here 7 months ago – better late than never and I very much enjoyed a well-deserved afternoon off!

Megan Earle : 18 Mar 2015 10:25 |  Tags: Exams Joanne Mbchb Warwick Warwickcastle |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Working 9–5?

What have I learnt so far in my first year of medical school? I’ve learnt what sepsis is and how you treat it, I’ve learnt why babies might pee out of their belly button and I’ve also learnt to juggle! Not the circus kind of juggling, the multi-tasking type!

Since Christmas this has been especially true. We have started our hospital placements, we had our formative OSCE to revise for, we also had our first reflection to submit and we still had all the usual lectures, CBL and self -directed work to do. In order to survive this I have a to-do list that is been constantly updated and a diary full of scribbles to keep me right. My to-do list is never empty but I do get a lot of pleasure from ticking things off and it’s a good reminder on a particularly hard day that you have achieved something, however small that might be!

I found our first official reflection quite difficult to do as it’s not something I have done before. Most of us are quite conscientious students and we are used to critically appraising our performance, but a reflection is quite different. It’s not always something you could do better in an academic or practical sense but perhaps you could cope with better.

The most important aspects of a reflection are your personal feelings, which are often difficult to verbalise let alone write down! I wrote my reflection on how patients with chronic conditions cope in the community and that while I had expected a set of medical problems I was actually confronted by very personal and social issues and how this actually made me feel quite uncomfortable as I was so unprepared for it.

Reflection is part of the junior doctor’s portfolio and professional development for doctors at every level. Getting practice while we are still at medical school may not seem that important at the time but if we can’t reflect now it will be even harder in high pressure situations post medical school without the help of our tutors!

While the juggling act during the day at medical school is difficult enough there are some of us, myself included who also work part-time. Many people choose to work a lot during the holidays to support themselves during term time but I’m working on an evening. Lots of my course mates work in health care part-time but I’m lucky to have found a flexible job on campus as part of the University Student calling team.

It’s my job to maintain relationships with graduates of Warwick and also fundraise with them. Sometimes going to work is an added stress I could do without but other times it’s a great way to do something that isn’t medicine! I also get the chance to call up graduates of the medical school and ask for tips and quiz them about their jobs - so I’m getting careers advice and getting paid for it!

I think it’s important to think about what you will have to juggle while you are at medical school before you get here, there are so many surprises at medical school that you can’t predict so the more organised and prepared you are the better!

Megan Earle : 05 Mar 2015 10:47 |  Tags: Joanne Mbchb Warwick |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem