All 23 entries tagged Abbie

Can I step outside for a minute?

We have been chugging along nicely with AC1 counting down the weeks until transition period. I am feeling slightly less nervous about it, but I am still a bit apprehensive about what is to come. However, we have had our last double weekly CBL sessions and have had our first “big” once weekly session, of which we will have in CCE1. I really did enjoy this, it was faced paced and it felt like we got a lot done in such a small amount of time. I got to indulge myself using my new whiteboard markers as I was scribe for this session. The board looked like a unicorn had given their fair share of input by the end.

We have also come to the end of my CLO sessions. My last session was with the vascular access team at UH where I was to watch a PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter – totally didn’t have to google that) line inserted into the arm of a patient who was unfortunately having to undergo chemotherapy. lt was such an interesting morning as I got to see several medical devices used. First was the ultrasound machine. This was used to see if the veins in the arms were viable for use of the catheter. Veins collapse under pressure from the probe whereas arteries do not, I was standing in the corner of the room watching this machine with awe trying (and failing again) to go over my anatomy of the vessels in the arm. I also got to see a very basic ECG machine used as this helps the vascular access team determine if the line is correctly placed in the heart. The ideal spot for the line is just above the right atrium where the pacemaker cells for the heart are also located. This means when the metal wire enters this area, we would see a change in the ECG in the form of a heightened P Wave (this is the wave the heart produces when the top (atriums) of it contracts). I was eagerly watching the screen of the ECG machine, but I suddenly began to feel very hot, and suddenly very ill. I tried to see if it would pass but after 30 seconds there was a very real possibility, I was going to be ill over the patient which isn’t really what you want to be doing so, I asked to step out. I was really annoyed because I had been in so many surgeries before, seen lots of blood, bones, gore and brains and loved every second. Yet, a simple PICC line with some bleeding made me take a turn. I was confused as I had eaten that day, had my morning coffee, yet this still happened. I went to sit in the break room where I bumped into Sam who is an ex ODP in my year and he was chatting to me and just cheering me up in general. It was the frustration more than anything that was bringing me down.

It is perfectly normal to feel a bit funny at any point of any procedure and I know the staff at the hospital would rather that we took ourselves away rather than, well, throwing up on the patient. Apparently, it creates some sort of infection risk, who knew? However, I can’t wait to get into surgery, I want to scrub in, and I want to be able to help in ops but I guess I just have to accept that I had one funny turn.

We have also now been allocated our transition week and thus our CCE departments. Turns out I won’t have to wait that much longer to get into surgery as I am in the anaesthetics department!! I have a consultant whose name reads as “Dr Ready” which I believe is the best name you could have as a doctor (apart from Watson or Who). This has slightly made me happier about transition weeks but since I am in a department and not a Ward, I am worried about how I settle in to my new “lecture theatre”. I can’t wait to start feeling more like a doctor though, more like I can be useful on the wards. I keep reminding myself I already know some consultants (Dr Burbridge I can imagine will be getting a couple of visits off me) and I do know some Warwick Grads who are now F1’s. I imagine my next blog will be reflecting on how transition weeks have gone. I guess the biggest downside is having to catch the 50-minute bus from campus every day, it’s bad enough having to get it once a week! Thankfully I now have a driving test booked for January so hopefully, I'll be less of a bus hobbit come the new year. Onwards and upwards !

Eden Villiers : 15 Nov 2019 10:31 |  Tags: Abbie Mbchb Patients Student Wards Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

I got to channel my inner Meredith Grey (kinda)

It only feels like two seconds a go since I wrote my last blog on here. Second year is a weird mash of having a slightly slower pace academic side of life, but then taking on everything you can get your hands on outside of medicine. So, it’s no surprise that I am tired already.

I’m still enjoying lectures and I really like this turn towards more clinical thinking. However, I know on the horizon are the transition weeks. I am nervous about these, for the past 4 and half years all I have known are lectures so this change of pace of learning is going to be hard to adapt. However, I am leaving this to November Abbie to deal with.

One amazing thing that has happened was my surgical induction. I had been looking forward to this a lot as I am sure I want to pursue surgery as a career. I know I must start building up my portfolio now, so I was keen to get into scrubs. I managed to get to Rugby for 7:30am (no small feat for someone who does not drive) and spent the next 20 minutes wandering around St. Cross trying to find the theatres before I eventually found them tucked away in the corner. The staff were lovely, and I was soon in scrubs (having taken the classic selfie) channelling my inner Meredith Grey (ok, let’s face it, I am more of a JD than anything!). I was introduced to the surgical team of who I was going to be shadowing and was luckily enough to watch the entire patient journey from them being put to sleep to waking up. I watched a hip replacement and for someone who has only seen Neurosurgery before, orthopaedics is definitely another world away. There is more protective gear to be worn so the surgeons walked in dressed in their normal gear plus these sci-fi type masks which gave them the resemblance of aliens on another planet. I also liked being able to see more of the operation and understand what was going on. Block 4 last year was not my best friend but I was still trying to drag up some memory of anatomy. I could remember the nervous supply, which for a neuro I suspect is good ! I was also chatting to the scrub nurse before asking about all the equipment. They had (for want of a better word) cheese grater like drills to drill into the hip socket. When they were eventually used , I decided that grated cheese was not on the menu for dinner this week. It was incredible to see the power behind this surgery and I really enjoyed my morning. I also got to see someone have spinal anaesthetic which was a slight “fan student” moment as we had learnt the theory behind these in a lecture the week previously.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay in the theatre all day as I was pulled away for bedside teaching, but the following week brought another love of mine. Paediatrics. I got to spend the morning with children who were going to have surgery. This meant I spent most of my morning blowing bubbles for children to play with. I even got a health examination by a four-year-old who decided my elbow was broken and preceded to fix it with a toy drill. I’m pretty convinced this is not NICE guideline approved but I’ll let them off this time. I’m not sure who was having more fun with bubbles and make-believe games on the ward that morning, me or the kids.

Outside of medicine I have also just been made the NANSIG rep for Warwick which was a huge moment for me. NANSIG is The Neurology and Neurosurgery Student Interest Group in the UK. They are huge so I was shocked they picked me, there are so many other people here who would have been amazing! I am going to be helping on their studies over the year which I am excited about. It is also going to give me more experience in research which I believe I desperately need! Revue has also started rehearsals for the 9^thof November. I loved this last year and it became a much-needed break from medicine. The script is just as amazing this year and I can’t wait to show it to everyone. It is one of the highlights of the calendar where everyone joins together for a comedy evening but we also raise money for a local charity so in the end, it’s all for a good cause !

That’s it for now, join me in November when I will be even more nervous about transitioning to clinical medicine!

(If you don't know who Meredith grey is or JD - then you need to watch Scrubs and Grey’s Anatomy)

Eden Villiers : 23 Oct 2019 08:48 |  Tags: Abbie Mbchb Patients Student Wards Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

We are back for seconds!

So, I am back, and have been for four weeks now. It’s been really busy, so I have had barely any time to sit down and think about what has gone on these past 4 weeks but now I have some spare time so let's begin!

We arrived back two weeks before the freshers arrived, it felt both good and weird to be back. Everything was the same, but different at the same time. We have now shifted to being grown up clinical medical students, so our lectures are reflecting that. The lectures are less of “this is how it works and what happens when it goes wrong” and more “it’s gone wrong, now let’s fix it”. I finally feel like I am training to become a doctor! I have also been hot on making sure I keep to my promises from last year in keeping myself well and energized to work. I make sure I stop working at 8pm each evening and just spend the next four hours doing whatever I want, I don’t feel guilty from taking a step back from medicine and even just 4 weeks after putting those measures in place, I can’t believe how I got through first year the way I did.

I am also a residential tutor this year. This means I live on campus in a block with 89 odd freshers (I have my own flat thankfully!) and be their first point of call through the year. So far, I have loved this role and it’s nice to think that I may be helping freshers get through the hardest first two weeks of term they will ever have. However, they have given me two separate types of fresher’s flu of which I am not thankful for them for, but I guess I will forgive them.

We are also now in hospitals on Mondays and I love it (despite my early bus rides from campus). We get to spend more time on the wards, where we will be working one day. I can now take blood from patients as I passed my TDOC on Monday (whoop). One moment that has stuck with me whilst doing my first clinical learning opportunity session with the REACT team at UHCW. My tutor suggested I go and see a patient with Parkinson’s who had significantly deteriorated and was severely ill. I went into the room and instead of throwing 21 questions at the wife, I ended up just helping her care for her husband by helping her clean her husband’s beard from custard. The wife looked exhausted and my first instinct is tea, tea solves everything. I dashed off to make her some, so I now know where the tea station is in ED (which I believe will come in handy) and when I came back, she was alone. I asked if she had had anything to eat and managed to find her some (very dry, very crumbly toast). I went to sit with her just to offer some comfort, but I was whisked away by my supervisor, I hope I helped her a little though! That singular moment there showed me why I had battled my way through first year and what I have to look forward to now I am out of lectures.

AC1 (Advanced Cases) block is a lot less intensive than first year, instead of 5 lectures a day we get 5-7 a week. It feels amazing and I don’t feel like I am swimming against the tide. It’s enabled me to get more involved with life outside of studying. I am a medic mother with a fellow neuro friend of mine, and we have two kids in the year below whom we basically cheerlead on through the year. My kids are also neuro inclined so we are one big brainy family, just as how I imagine my actual family to be! I am also excited to get to teach on Anatomy and Physiology days as well as setting up Flash Seminars to allow more opportunities for peer teaching for those not involved in Student Seminars. I have also re-visited my beloved climbing wall where I fully realized how much I missed climbing over summer. I am even signed off now to belay other people up the wall, something my little sister is particularly excited about.

So far, Year 2 has been brilliant, and I can’t wait to get further stuck into this block. Next Monday, I have the thing I have been waiting for… my surgical induction! I’m now off to a communication skills session with a SIM patient so I guess this is it till the end of the month. School is officially back.

Lucinda Sidbury : 08 Oct 2019 09:49 |  Tags: Abbie Blog Mbchb Medicine Second Warwick Year |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Signing off for Summer

What. A.Year.

It’s flown by and it only feels like 5 seconds ago I was walking in through the doors of WMS and collecting my orange lanyard. I still can’t believe that I’ve managed to learn as much as I have learnt and got through the exams. If you had shown to me all the work I would be doing over this year and how much I would have to learn back in September, I probably would have frozen to the spot with fear.

Apart from the academia, I have learnt so much about how I need to approach next year. For starters, I need to take time out. I’ve spent too much time glued to my desk in the MTC before exams and I was most certainly burnt out by the time we reached the end of OSCEs. I want to get involved in running student seminars, anatomy days, physiology days and take time out for climbing and friends. I also want to get involved in research up at UHCW and start to build on my CV and surgical experience in the field I want to follow.

Second year also brings about the arrival of SSC1 which is a module we get to pick. There were a couple of options that took my interest, but I decided to go for Middlemarch (medical humanities) as my first choice and medical ethics as my second. This morning I found out I got my first choice of Middlemarch and I can’t wait to get into the book when it arrives tomorrow. I was surprised that I got my first choice because this is normally the most popular one so I was pretty happy when it came through. I am looking forward to it because I can potentially bring my favourite book into the coursework element of it, and I don’t need telling twice to be able to talk about “The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time”.

I am also looking forward to maintaining my links with GOSH over the next year. I have been privileged enough to be invited back to sit on their summer school de-brief to discuss how to promote GOSH educational events, and hopefully be able to volunteer at their conferences in the future. This is the hospital I have always dreamed of working in. The recent separation of the twins conjoined at the cranium was just the extra motivation I need to keep going. I want to be there, at the front line of developing technologies helping to make critically ill children’s lives better. I knew I always wanted to work in the field of paediatrics, but having experienced and talked to the clinicians at GOSH, I know that’s where I need to be and where my personality and enthusiasm fits in the best.

GOSH seems to be a repeating theme with me and during the past couple of weeks, I have also been to Brain School which has been set up by a GOSH neurosurgeon. I’ve wanted to attend this event for a while but it’s difficult to get down to London with the first-year timetable so now I am back in Kent, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to go. The lecture was given by Prof. Mark Wilson (who is also running trials at Warwick!) and he talked about Neuro trauma and how these patients need to be treated more specifically in the field. I also learnt a few “pub quiz” facts such as “the cranium will always contain the same amount of blood when you die no matter if you have died from haemorrhage or asphyxiation” and “the brain is the only organ that is protected against atmospheric pressure”. We were also introduced to the Good Sam app which allows a by-stander to activate an alert for a cardiac arrest to near responders and for remote responders to see the patient’s stats, just by the camera. It uses some AI technology but just by holding the camera to the patients face, it shows blood oxygen saturation and heart rate with complete accuracy. This was incredible and I can imagine how critical it will be for incidents in remote areas where it may take responders more time to arrive at the scene in comparison to an inner-city cardiac arrest.

I am now signing off for the summer. I’ve got some work with Medify to try and give me a bit of pocket money but I want this summer to be a break. This has been a hard year. I am slightly nervous abut adapting to the change of learning style in January next year from lectures to bedside teaching. I don’t deal hugely well with dramatic changes and it will be weird coming out of 4 straight years of lectures to an academic day once every two weeks. However, I am looking forward to it. There’s only so much lecture hall you can put up with! I’ll see you in September!

Good luck to the second years who are currently revising for their exams!

Hattie Trigg : 15 Aug 2019 10:00 |  Tags: Abbie Gem Gosh Graduate-Entry Mbchb Medicine Student University Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Visiting GOSH

I decided that despite a year of intense studying, I had not quite had enough of sitting in a lecture theatre. I had been lucky enough to win a free ticket to GOSH Summer School and having passed first year, I was excited to get on a train to pop home for a couple of days so I could commute to London. However, come 8:50am on the Monday morning, I was not enjoying the crush on the train.

I got to GOSH for 9:15am and picked up my name badge and they had changed it to say second year which was lovely! I ended up chatting to a medical student from Vienna before we had our first session of the day from Prof. Fertleman about her life as a paediatric consultant. I really enjoyed her talk as she was lively, and you could see the passion she had for her job. I also found out later she likes to terrorise the junior docs after she ran after one of them on their first day shouting “They are stealing the notes, they are stealing the notes” before catching up with them and saying “Only joking, I’m your consultant, let’s start the rounds, shall we?”. I think I would have needed a week off after that scare if it had been me.

We also had a couple of talks from surgeons at GOSH which was my original career plan. The surgeries to correct birth defects were fascinating to listen to and I could see myself coming away from the brain and to the pioneering surgeries in this field. This defect away from my norm surprised me as I was pretty much set on my career path! We also had a talk from Prof. Paolo De Coppi about his work in regenerative medicine. He was part of the team that created the first stem cell tracheal transplant and the recipient is still doing well two years later. This again was incredible to learn about as these Stem Cell transplants will become the norm for us as we progress through our career.

We were also given a lot of careers advice through dedicated careers lectures and a career fair. The idea of an F3 year between qualifying and starting specialty training kept being repeated to us over the course of the three days so it is something I need to look into. The careers fair was useful because we were able to talk to consultants without the traditional student-consultant barrier and I got some insight into different specialties which has made me think about what I want to do when I qualify. One of these was PICU (paediatric intensive care unit). The consultant was lovely and was open and honest when we asked him about why he has chosen PICU over NICU. I was also able to chat with the professor who had run a session for us on the first day in which my group won the presentations and a GOSH textbook! I was chatting to him about getting into research and what consultants expect from their medical students when it comes to helping out on projects in hospital. He was lovely and told me to just get out there and do it. It did boost my confidence a bit because being in a lecture theatre where you are the only one who didn’t get straight A’s at A Level, you can feel a bit like the underdog. I also had a conversation with one of the Neurology consultants at GOSH about how best to prepare for applying to work in the neurosciences and the answer was what I was expecting: Get involved in research and show dedication. He seemed receptive when I was talking about my undergraduate degree so I am hoping that is a arrow in my quiver already.

After our careers fair we also had a GOSH arts session where we had 44 medical students standing up all singing, and I have to say for a bunch of people who have seen the inside of a hospital more than their own homes over the past couple of years, the harmonies were really good!

We also had a small drinks party after the second day. This was held on top of GOSH hospital and you could see out all over London. It was a beautiful day and we were being shown buildings such as the royal collages around GOSH. It was a lovely evening just getting to talk with other med students from different universities. I even bumped into a F1 from George Elliot! I also got talking with a soon to be F1 about being a medic at Glastonbury and he was telling me about how they managed to get discounted training though having a large group so I’ll be looking into getting a couple of Warwick guys down!

Overall the three days were invaluable to me. The best advice I received all week though from the medical director at GOSH was “you shouldn’t ever change yourself to suit the job you are going for, instead be bold and be the person to be different”, so I guess surgery has a quirky, excitable medical student heading their way!

Abbie

Charlie Gallan : 19 Jul 2019 11:51 |  Tags: Abbie Gosh Mbchb Student Summer Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem