All entries for March 2019

Highlighters, Blue pens and Common Room Heaters

This is it. The big revision break is here. I am happy to say it is going well as far. I have got myself into a nice routine and even discovered I am a bit of an early bird starting at 8am every day. I have also found that I work well in the common room but it is freezing in here, so I have kidnapped a heater from the CBL rooms and I now am as toasty as …. Well … Toast? I am also finding (rather oddly) that moving round the common room day to day is helping me to revise and not procrastinate so I am making full use of have the entire room to myself.

It’s going ok and I am pleased with my progress for once! I have decided to hit three blocks over Easter as I wanted to take things a slowly rather than trying to cram four blocks in four weeks without a break, so I will tackle Block Three (my favourite block) with Block 5. I am hoping that will work, as I would rather get a good breadth of information rather than trying to work myself to the bare bones and burn out before exams. I am a lot calmer than I was last week, I think this is because I am finally able to review and learn the things that we didn't have time for when in the blocks. You have to get used to taking in content quickly as you are hit with new information every day, and I worked out that we have had 21 solid weeks of new content since September. It sounds scary, but it's all coming together, and I can finally see the connections between lectures so it's making it a lot easier to learn. You just need to keep in mind that the human body is an intricate puzzle and you have to see the bigger picture to understand how each part works.

Not much has gone on here apart from me walking into the MTC at 8am to start revision and leaving between 5pm and 8pm to go home and collapse on my bed. However, I did pop back up to Preston for a couple of days over the last week which is where I completed my undergraduate degree. It was nice to see my old lecturers and catch up with my old course mates and of course my best friends. It’s important to keep in touch with your non-medic friends during the course as it can get lonely when you're in week 7 out of 10 and the only people that you talk to are other medics. I got to go into my old SU bar and have a pizza of which I had been craving for a while, and in the evening, we headed to a “place of entertainment” of which I had missed a lot and sung every song that came on at the top of my lungs. It was amazing to catch up with them and even though I haven't seen them since July, it felt like I had never been away. It was good to get out of Coventry and away from my textbooks and now feel a little bit less like a walking textbook, albeit a rather blank textbook.

There has also been the introduction of a #MedStudentTwitter this week on Twitter so I have been following it as part of my revision/ procrastination breaks and people have been sharing tips on clinical learning and revision for exams. It is a nice way to be reminded that you are part of a wider community of future doctors and that we are all banding together to support each other through the intense world of medical school.

I'm looking forward to the open day next week as I am doing the student life talk for the incoming perspective med students. This feels a bit deja vu as I used to do the student life talks for my old university in front of more than 500 people so, it will be nice to do what I loved. I know the university are overtaking the common room for the open day so, I guess I am going to have to find somewhere else to make a revision nest in. I don't mind I guess these people will be in their first year when I'm in my third, which is quite a scary thought!

I have procrastinated enough writing this blog……. back to Gas Laws and Tubular Flow it is!

Abbie

Charlie Gallan : 29 Mar 2019 14:21 |  Tags: Abbie Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

University Hospital & The Community

The last two weeks have covered the first two weeks of Core Clinical Education 2 (CCE2), and my placement has been at University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW). UHCW is the main teaching hospital for Warwick Medical School, and is the largest hospital in the region, also encompassing a major trauma centre. One of our named consultants is a renal/kidney doctor, and we went to one of the renal outpatient clinics. The majority of patients attend for routine monitoring of kidney damage, with the majority of causes of this being due to diabetes and heart issues. This provides some good revision of our heart failure and diabetes learning and just goes to prove that no area of medicine is an island – everything is connected! And I thought we were attending just a kidney clinic!

On Tuesday, we taught our last student seminar of the term, and the last before the Easter holidays for the first years. The first years have a month off for Easter, then 5 weeks of Block 5, and then their exams. The exams are definitely looming large in many of their minds, with about 2 months to go before the end of year 1 exams. We did some teaching on getting the most from revision, and also offered some reassurance that everything will be okay! I remember being in the same position this time last year, and how worried I was about the exams. Our focus was mostly on getting a good work-life balance over Easter – it is key revision time, but also the last time off they will get before exams, so it is so important to also have some down time.

We have also had a couple of community days over the last two weeks, where we went into the community to learn about how patients are managed in care homes, GP surgeries and in their homes. The first community day was focussed on clinical audit, with teaching sessions on how to do a clinical audit, which we will be doing with our GP practices throughout CCE2. Clinical audits are activities in which we will be involved for the rest of our working lives, no matter what area we go into, so its good to have some focused teaching on this now. In addition, if we present audit findings at conferences etc, this stands us in good stead when applying for jobs. Unbelievably, our first jobs as doctors are little over two years away – and I’m sure this time will fly by in the blink of an eye!

Our second community day involved a patient visit to a brain injury unit, which was a really valuable learning experience in terms of how brain injury patients are cared for in the community. It really made me think about my own life too, and about the things that I value and reminded me that it is really important to enjoy life as you go by. It is so easy when very busy to not take notice of small things - the small victories and valued experiences with family and friends. Medicine sometimes makes you really appreciate your own life and I think this is one of the empowering aspects of meeting so many different people. It can be quite a cool career really!

Jordan

Charlie Gallan : 21 Mar 2019 12:48 |  Tags: Jordan Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Goodbye Block 4, Hello Easter “break”

This week we did our final Phase One community day. It was a bittersweet day as although I will miss our tutors and how beautiful the town is, I won’t miss doing the presentations nor the rain which seemed to appear each day we went to Stratford. Our tutors have been lovely, and it was always nice heading back to the base to see them after a long day and discussing how our days with the patients and other representatives have been. They have always managed to get interesting patients and gave us some incredible feedback. I was told that my communication skills were good and for someone who isn’t exactly wired to be amazing at this, I was rather pleased!

We have also had to submit our first clinical case reports which was slightly nerve-racking as there was an essay element to it meaning I had to drag out the skill of writing academic essays from the depths of dissertation land as I have only really been writing in bullet points since September! However, I strangely enjoyed doing this as I got to direct my own learning and find out more of an area of care which intrigued me. I ended up writing about the use of fibrinolytic therapy as pre-hospital medicine and I hope that I will be able to use this new information next year (if I pass my exams). I found out this is mostly what clinical learning consists off after having seen the year 2 resources, so I am looking forward to being able to direct my own learning next year (if I pass my exams).

We also had the deans breakfast this week which I was intrigued about as I had to miss the last one due to illness. I very nearly missed this one as I had woken up at 6:30 am so I could get ready and amble up to the med school, only to have had a nap and ended up waking up at 7:30. I’ve never been so grateful to be living on campus where I could throw on some (less crumpled) clothes and leg it up the hill. Essentially, we have breakfast with the dean (which I suppose is self-explanatory) and a couple of senior staff such as Colin McDougall and we were encouraged to chat about what is going well and what isn’t. We were all keen to mention that having Wednesday off has been a blessing as it has meant we have had some room to breathe and catch up so hopefully, this will continue for the year below us. We also suggested about trying to get some of the main campus services to the Med School such as food from Rootes etc. as we just don’t have the time to be wandering down to campus and back and eat the food in the lunch break we have and it would be nice to have some choice as to what we have for lunch up here.

Despite the windy weather now, we have also had some beautiful sun which we all took full advantage of by sitting out in the sunshine working on our notes and actively learning about Vitamin D and UV rays. We suggested that we could have a (non-alcoholic drinks of course) bar on the Med School balcony and call it the Guillain-Barre. We could also have “The Grubby Goose” but I prefer the former. On that day, I also met with my fellow Warwick MedLife blogger Jordan to discuss our slides for the upcoming Open Days. It was finally nice to put a face to a name and I like to way our PowerPoint is looking, a touch of fear followed by a wave of “it’s all going to be ok”.

I am feeling a bit calmer about exams and revision than I was the other week, but you can tell the apprehension is building in the year. We ran a Tea and Empathy society this week and the topic on everyone’s minds was what they are going to do over Easter, and how they were going to revise. I think I have had an idea, but I have also been asking the year above us what tips they have, I just have to keep telling myself that I can learn it – and not start panicking. I have so many plans for the second year, so I am going to try my hardest to not have to retake and continue my medical education. I think we are all worried in some way or another about not making it to next year, but we have Easter break for revision and tonne of support we can access.

We can do this guys !

Abbie

Charlie Gallan : 14 Mar 2019 08:43 |  Tags: Abbie Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Goodbye George Eliot, until next we meet

The end of CCE 1 is upon the second years and I for one cannot believe it. It seems like 5 minutes ago I was writing my blog at Christmas talking about starting CCE and how different my life was going to be as a clinical phase medical student. For that reason, I think this is quite a good juncture to pause and take stock of how CCE 1 has been for me!

First of all, the final weeks of CCE 1 (weeks 9 & 10). As mentioned in the previous blog, we have spent these final weeks doing our audit in George Eliot Hospital into surgical complications. Basically, the audit involves finding out the operation lists for each day and then finding the patient after surgery and going through the notes, looking for complications and consequences of surgery. We have been incredibly busy doing the audit over the last few weeks – staying in hospital until 10:30pm one evening going through hundreds of pages of medical notes and making sure our data collection was accurate. I won’t say it hasn’t been challenging, because it has been extremely exhausting! At the same time though, having done the audit is great experience and has taught us lots about abdominal surgeries and types of surgical incisions (interesting, if not immediately useful!). This week I also had to apply to do my research project for next year. I will (hopefully!) be doing something to do with bereavement care in the UK – watch this space!

Coming to the end of CCE 1 means we are a third of the way through our Core Clinical Education, so it is also a good time to stop and think and take stock of what I’ve learned about both medicine and myself this block at George Eliot Hospital. My statistics for CCE 1:

- 10 weeks (January to March)
- 4 supervising consultants (2 cardiologists, 1 respiratory doctor and 1 anaesthetist)
- 9-10 bloods taken
- 4 clinical skills labs (acute assessment, blood gases, oxygen masks, cannulation)
- 7 days spent with our GP practice
- 9 workshops (on topics ranging from fever to weight loss)
- 5 academic days
- 1 clinical partner – Cliona
- Lots of awkwardly standing on the wards trying to make eye contact!

Coming to the end of my placement at George Eliot Hospital is bittersweet. We did our very first clinical experiences in first year at this hospital and has been here ever since (about 16 months – our entire medical degree until this point). All of my stream really have started our medical careers here at George Eliot and created great relationships with the undergraduate staff and education team alike. I think they’ve seen us grow from nervous first year students into slightly less nervous, and slightly more competent second year medical students! George Eliot is a smallish hospital, but it will be the first of many hospitals in my medical career, and I think for that reason, I’ll always be a little bit fond of it. Next week I’m off to University Hospital Coventry, which is the main teaching hospital for the University of Warwick, and this will bring different challenges, but is also really exciting in the wider range of specialities we will get a chance to see there. Until next time!

Jordan

Charlie Gallan : 08 Mar 2019 14:16 |  Tags: Jordan Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Anaesthesia, Audits

Over the last couple of weeks, I have busy getting stuck into my Anaesthetics block. This has mostly involved time in main theatres with the anaesthetists. We follow the patient journey through their operation, which was great as we saw the patient on the ward before the operation for their pre-operative assessment (to make sure they are fit for surgery), then in the anaesthetic room before surgery and then into theatre throughout the operation. The patients are understandably anxious before their surgery, and it was really nice to chat to them as they had their anaesthetic and hopefully distracted them from their anxiety (and the needles!), if only for a minute or two.

We saw some really interesting aspects of anaesthesia, including patients undergoing general anaesthetic (being sent to sleep), but also local anaesthetics and spinals (where an injection into the spinal cord directly numbs the nerve roots). I hadn’t really considered the fact that patient can undergo major surgeries with only spinal anaesthesia, meaning that they are awake throughout the procedure. I think more and more surgeries are being done in this way now, meaning that the risks and after effects of general anaesthesia can be avoided.

Another activity that I’ve been involved in recently is clinical audit. We have to do a research project as part of the course in third year (called Student Selected Component 2), but most students are also involved in additional audits or projects whilst studying. I think before I joined the course I hadn’t really considered anything other than getting onto the course itself and wasn’t really sure how to get involved in audits and the like or the value of doing these.

Students decide to take part for many reasons – prime amongst these is that an audit counts as extra “points” for foundation scheme places and thus makes you more likely to get the Foundation Doctor job that you want. As well as this, it gives you experience in research (essential aspects of a doctor’s career) and also gives you a chance to shape or contribute to improving patient care. Finding research projects isn’t too difficult – just chatting to some of the doctors that you meet during your placements anyway leads them to mention various projects they are involved in/want to start and most are very keen to get students on board to help with data collection.

One such chance encounter happened to me and my clinical partner whilst we were shadowing one of the doctors in anaesthetics, meaning that we are now involved in a project to look at complications post-surgery. We are involved in data collection, which involves looking at patient notes and recording details of the operation and then recording complications after the surgery has concluded. So far its been a very good experience of being involved in research and serves as good practice for reading patient notes to boot.

After a busy week, I definitely need a chance to unwind, and it so happens tonight is that chance. I’m part of the Teddy Bear Hospital Society and tonight we are holding a movie night for charity, and it happens to be a showing of The Greatest Showman – sing-along version! I’ve been rehearsing all week in preparation….

Jordan

Megan Earle : 04 Mar 2019 12:00 |  Tags: Anaesthesia Audits Mbchb Student Teddybearhospital Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem