All entries for July 2018
July 30, 2018
Graduation
Thursday 19 July was the day that we’d all been waiting for. After four years of hard work, just over 150 men and women walked across the stage at the Arts Centre, shook hands with the Chancellor of Warwick University, and collected MB ChB degree certificates from the head of the programme. I was honoured and delighted to be among them. When I accepted the offer from Warwick Medical School back in April 2014, I didn’t know what to expect but I never thought it would be like this. I didn’t think I would make such good friends, learn such a huge amount of information, and miss the environment of WMS so much once I’d left.
The day itself went by in a roasting blur – this wasn’t helped by combining the month-long heatwave and wearing very heavy black robes on a sunny day in July! But it doesn’t matter – at least if we have one thing in common, other than that all graduates were a sweaty mess by the end of the day, it’s that we actually did it! We actually graduated from medical school! In the ceremony itself, we listened to some fantastic music by Warwick musicians, heard some inspiring speeches (including one to the MB ChB graduates in particular by an alumna) and got to applaud our coursemates as we watched them all officially become doctors.
Probably the most inspiring moment of the entire ceremony was the recitation by all MB ChB graduates of the Oath of Geneva, led by a member of our cohort. I normally hold myself together well, but I have to admit to a small lump in the back of my throat by the end of the oath. We all promised before ourselves, our families and each other to take seriously our responsibility to providing the best care possible and be the best doctors we can be, and the oath was a public commitment to this. It represented what we had been working for this whole time, and now we are entrusted with some serious responsibility.
After the ceremony, which honestly flew by, we paraded out to the stone steps on the piazza and gathered for the (in)famous group picture that will grace the walls of the Medical Teaching Centre for years to come alongside every other graduating year. Grouping us by height made herding cats look easy! The poor photographers – at least they’re making good money from the cost of the photograph. Yikes! We got one nice, formal snap and one with our hats thrown in the air, and I cannot wait to get mine in the post. Following the photograph free-for-all, the medical school was kind enough to put on a very nice lunch buffet for graduates and guests. The food was lovely and the atmosphere was great. Finally I got to meet the parents and families of my friends and acquaintances – the ones who had tales of support and sympathy similar to those my own family tell. It was a wonderful experience and one which I shall always remember.
It seems we have now come to the end of the road. At this point, it only remains for me to thank you, dear reader, for following this blog and gamely tolerating my adventures in medical school and throughout Warwickshire and the West Midlands over these years. I wish you the best, wherever you may be, and I remain respectfully yours.
Joshua Galvin
30 Jul 2018 08:38
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July 16, 2018
Reflecting on Four Years of Medical School
I still remember every day of my pre-med-school life: I remember the day I sat the UKCAT. I remember the day of my interview (it was totally different to how they do it now!). I remember the day I got my offer to study medicine at Warwick, the day I left my old job (and salary…) and took a plunge into the unknown, and the day I moved up to Coventry to start medical school. I remember the excitement in the air on our first day: 170 new and nervous people all crammed into the lecture theatre together for the first time. I remember feeling excited and bewildered and finding it slightly hilarious to be having another Freshers’ week!
And we made it through. We made it through the first year, where everything was new and the volume of information seemed HUGE at the time (little did I know…), and they said we would gain the equivalent of a new language with all of the new terms and expressions that we were expected to know; those words and phrases roll off our tongues without hesitation now. I thought they never would do but now it seems entirely normal. We made it through all five blocks, as the wonders of the human body became clear to us. We had to learn how things were supposed to work correctly before learning how they can go wrong. I’m an anatomy geek (in another life I would have been an engineer, I suppose) and so Locomotion (Block 4) was far and away my favourite block. We made it through first-year exams – I’ve sat a lot of exams in my day and these were the hardest I’d ever sat.
We made it through Phase II, where we actually got to spend time in hospital and got to attend clinics for areas we were interested in because we had time for them and were encouraged to learn about everything. These were the days when we had time to spend the afternoon watching a thyroid operation if we wanted to – and if we were lucky, we would get to scrub in, and you can be certain that we would tell all of our friends about it at the weekend and they’d probably be jealous! Phase II was the time where all of our pre-clinical teaching came to life: all of the things we’d read about were now right in front of us. I got to manoeuvre the camera on a laparoscopic appendicectomy (a keyhole removal of an appendix) and it was the coolest thing I’d ever done. I saw a patient’s liver! This made my week.
And we made it through Phase III, probably the largest volume of information I’ve ever had to learn in my life (and I’ve already got a few degrees under my belt). Phase III was the specialist clinical placements – our time was much more restricted and focused in this year. We no longer had time to bounce around between interesting clinics because, after all, you ever know what’s going to come up on finals! And we were on for 48 weeks out of 50 in 2017, it was the longest and shortest year of my life at the same time, but I learned more information than I ever thought possible. And guess what: we made it through. Of course we did.
Now that we’re done with medical school, I can honestly say that I am so glad to have done it this way: although the work was really hard and sometimes I thought I would go mad from stress, I learned so much that I can’t even put it into words. It showed that we can do it. I learned about how the body works, what goes wrong with it and how to fix it. I learned how to interact with patients and colleagues in a clinical setting. I learned about disease and management and everything else. And, I’d like to think, I learned how to be a good, competent and safe Foundation doctor – because that is what I plan to be at the end of the month. Now, the only thing that remains is for us all to walk across that stage and collect our degrees. Watch this space…
John
Joshua Galvin
16 Jul 2018 08:06
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