All entries for March 2018
March 22, 2018
Post–Finals and Medical Electives
After a seemingly unending course of exams – clinicals, writtens, and then practicals – we finally got our results from our finals last week. After having been through this process a couple of times (both Phase I and Phase II results periods were similar), we were pretty used to the drill. Still, this didn’t reduce the anxiety and uncertainty in the buildup to results day. It’s like this big clock constantly ticking in the background and you barely notice it getting louder and louder until eventually you can’t ignore it any longer. Knowing the exact date and time that results will be released – whilst appreciated and necessary – doesn’t make the anxiety any easier! I don’t know a single person who was entirely certain that they’d made it through. Everybody was on edge. And just like Phase II results, we didn’t have much of a buffer zone between results day and getting ready to go off on the next stage: this time, it was our elective – we found out the news on Thursday and our elective period started four days later on the following Monday. Those who were successful on their finals were permitted to proceed to their elective.
I’m delighted to say that I passed. More than elation, I’m just relieved. Although it is a bit strange to know what to do with myself – I’m so used to being in the revision mindset that I am having a really difficult time just relaxing without the compulsion to be doing something exam-related. I’m really glad my passmedicine subscription expired the other day – otherwise I’d probably still be doing a few dozen questions a day!
Lots of people in my cohort elected to spend their elective overseas, so I’m already hearing stories of fabulous times in the most exotic locations. The purpose of the elective period is to experience medicine in a different surrounding, thereby allowing us to compare, contrast and grow as clinicians when we return to a more familiar surrounding. As you can imagine, after forty-three months of extremely hard and intense work with very few breaks, most people apply the ‘different setting’ rules rather liberally – and with good reason. It’s a great opportunity to travel somewhere exotic and new and experience some better weather than what we have in England – and why not? All electives require approval from the medical school, so it’s all perfectly legitimate, but once that approval is given then we’re good to go.
I spent a month for our SSC2 block (October 2016) in the Gambia, researching TB investigations. For this reason, I was less motivated to have another big overseas elective experience – also because I couldn’t have borne cancelling it had I not been successful in my finals. So instead of going somewhere like India, Sri Lanka, Colombia or New Zealand (all destinations of people in my cohort) I decided to return to my old home in Greater London. For the first three weeks of this six-week block I’m based in the A&E department of a medium-sized district general hospital in an affluent area of the capital, and am enjoying myself tremendously. The acute block in Phase III was my favourite block, and being able to relive these experiences in a different setting and get properly stuck in is so much fun, and really what I understand the elective period to be all about.
John
Joshua Galvin
22 Mar 2018 11:01
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March 13, 2018
There’s Light at the End of the Tunnel – or is that the Approaching Train?
As we are now in our final year, we have been experiencing the joys of final exams over the past month or so. If the truth be told, the exam season actually kicked off at the beginning of December with the Situational Judgement Test, and we had the Warwick Safe Prescribing Assessment (SPA) exam at the beginning of January (plus the odd mock exam here and there) but it really got underway in earnest with OSCEs (structured clinical exams) on 12 February. With just a month separating the OSCEs and our last scheduled exam in the first sit (this is the national Prescribing Safety Assessment), it’s been a tough old run and most of us just want a few days to sleep and hibernate.
After the written component of our assessment (SAQs and MCQs), our cohort was assessed via the OSLER (Objective Structured Long Examination Record) method. There was a very famous Canadian physician called Dr William Osler (he of the eponymous nodes) and I have often wondered if there is a connection between him and the rather clunky acronym for our exams. Maybe I’ll make it my mission to find out when we’re all done – that is, if I still have the energy!
We haven’t got our results from any exam yet aside from the SPA, so these could be my famous last words, but all in all I found the OSLER process quite manageable. We each were assigned a full day and a half day of OSLERs. I was in a group of people who started our OSLERs very late in the week and thus most of my cohort had had their full day before I did. Of course nobody shared specifics of their cases with anyone else, but I was told that the time does pass quite quickly during the day when you’re actually doing it – and I found that to be the case as well. All of the patients whom I examined were really nice and friendly, and it seemed like they really wanted each student to pass and do well. I am always grateful to patients who give up their time to help us medical students learn and be assessed – they seem to enjoy themselves and it must be great fun to watch students come through all day. I might get tired of being examined repeatedly, but none of them seemed to mind that much. Maybe there was more variation in exam technique than I realised!
Recently our allocations to the Foundation Programme were released. This is the region of the country – known as the deanery – in which we will be doctors for the next two years. This was really exciting for everyone, as it’s a combination of a few things – both our educational performance ranking (for which we get 50 points out of 100) and the results of the SJT exam sat back in December (for which we get the remaining 50 points). Our combined score decides our ranking against all of the other 7,000-odd applicants from all over the country (and even the world, as there is a sizeable international component) and this in turn dictates which of the programmes we are allocated to. It’s very exciting to ponder the next step of our lives, and it’s really hard to believe that in a few short months, we will be sent to all corners of the country to start the next phase of our careers!
John
Joshua Galvin
13 Mar 2018 10:24
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