All 8 entries tagged Abbie
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February 04, 2019
Second Community day and Conferencing
Block three has been chugging along and it is my favourite block of the year. The anatomy content has been sticking in my head and I am enjoying learning more about the anatomy and physiology of neuroscience, building on what I had been taught in my undergraduate degree. A couple of us have also been contacting a neurosurgeon up at UHCW with the possibility of observing/ working on projects with them.
We also had our second community day. This time we had a paediatric patient which I was excited about as I know I want to go into paediatrics when I specialise. We had some problems initially as the area we were visiting had no signal and all we had was a rough map of the area to find the house, so we were touring the area before we finally found it. It was a different experience to last time as we were not talking to the patient but rather to the parent. It was slightly hard as we only found out about the condition 5 minutes before we arrived, so we were doing some quick thinking as we walked up to the house. The parent was knowledgeable about the condition, so it was easier for us to interview them and we got a lot of information out of the day. The child was also sweet and shy at first but, after lapping the living room on their toy car several times, they gained the confidence to come up to us and show us their hands as they related to the condition they had. It’s difficult to describe this case as it is rare so could be easily identifiable.
We must present our cases next week, so this is going to be something we must keep an eye on. We also visited the local primary school and we all had flashbacks to when the only stress in life was who you were going to line up with to go to assembly. The school was fantastic, and we were told about the adjustments that schools make for children with needs and policies regarding the safeguarding of vulnerable children. The teachers were lovely and the headmaster offered us the opportunity to go back for some experience or to work with the school. I was excited about this as I want to run a STEM outreach day at some point and it would be interesting to look at the affect of outreach days on children’s wellbeing.
We also visited the hospital to talk to a nurse about pre-natal screening in which we were told about the pathways used when a mother is identified as Hep-B / HIV positive. They also highlighted a new test coming into the NHS which will screen the baby’s DNA that is circulating in the mother’s blood which is safer than taking a sample of the amniotic fluid and more accurate than taking measurements from a scan. We finished at 3.00pm and due to some problems with the roads we could go straight to campus, so I was able to get some work done before my student seminar in the evening.
This term has given me a bit more breathing room to start thinking about how to build up my portfolio and as someone who wants to go into surgery, I want to make sure I stand out from the crowd. The surgical society put on a “Women in surgery” evening where some surgeons from the local trusts came and talked to us about their careers. They were very keen to highlight the point of finding a good mentor and not letting a career in surgery become a choice between being a surgeon or having a family.
This weekend I also took a trip down to London along with a couple of other Warwick Meds to a conference on Careers in Neurosurgery. This is a field I have dreamt of going into after reading Henry Marsh’s book in Year 13. Henry Marsh was meant to be at the event, but he was ill on the day so could not attend. However, it was still a great day and I picked up a lot of tips and information about how to build up my portfolio to stand a good chance of getting an interview. There were some other presentations about the tools used in Neurosurgery and the ones that are being developed. One memorable one was the AI camera which could analyse the procedure and tell the surgeon when it was time to move onto the next step. It wasn’t perfect but it could help to train new surgeons and I am watching the world of AI as this is going to become a more commonplace in hospitals as we progress through our career.
Abbie
Charlie Gallan
04 Feb 2019 10:55
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January 21, 2019
Let loose on the wards
So, it finally happened! We have had our first bedside teaching and it definitely lived up to my expectations. I am at UHCW for my first year and have my bedside teaching on Tuesday afternoons, which is a slight pain in the ass for parking at UHCW in the afternoon. However, Matt and I managed by sheer luck to grab a space within 40 minutes of getting there. We headed in and made it with 5 minutes to spare before the lecture welcoming us into the trust. We were told about what is expected of us, how to sign in and general admin before we were introduced to our consultants.
My consultant is lovely and approachable which is something I had been worried about as you hear a lot about the nature of consultants to hide away from medical students. So, I was happy to have an approachable teacher who was keen to get us straight on the wards. We went to the Medical Decisions Unit where patients are transferred from A&E and within 10 minutes, I was meeting my first patient.
I was nervous because this was all new and I did feel a bit sorry for the patient who suddenly had 4 medical students descend on them, plus a clinical fellow who was supervising us, so it got cramped in the cubicle but we got through. We carried out a history and some clinical examinations under the supervision of the clinical fellow who was writing down our findings into the patient’s actual notes! I carried out an abdominal and respiratory exam and it really hit home why we learn clinical skills every Friday. It is easy for it to become out of context but putting these skills into use allowed me to put Friday lectures into context.
After we finished, we were sent away to discuss treatment plans and differential diagnoses amongst ourselves and it really hit home why we are doing what we are doing. I’ve said it before, it's easy to get lost amongst the hours of lectures, workshops and self-study but when we get to put our knowledge into a clinical setting when there is a real life involved, it makes it all seem worthwhile.
I had a bit of an idiot moment at the end of the day as I spent 20 minutes trying to get into a locker that wasn’t mine. I mistakenly had written my name on the wrong locker and only by curiosity I had discovered my mistake – I think I need more caffeine in my life!
Coming back round to the academic life, we have started block three and it is as interesting and brilliant to learn as I thought it would be. I come from a neuroscience background so I had been virtually pining for some brains. It’s not easy and there is a lot to learn but it’s nice to hear familiar words again and I feel a bit more at home on my turf now. We are seeing brain MRI scans virtually every day and I am taking the opportunity to transfer my new knowledge onto my own brain MRI scan that I had done a couple of years ago.
My favourite lecture so far must be the one we had on consciousness. I was expecting the philosophical approach that I had sat through in my undergraduate degree. I was so wrong. We had a consultant neurosurgeon from UHCW (so I was in slight awe to begin with) and he approached it from the GSC score (how we assess how “awake” someone is). He was funny and gave a lot of insight into the scale so I took a lot away from the lecture. Neurosurgery is a career I am determined to pursue having completed two weeks as part of my pre-med work experience. I find the brain fascinating and to see it for the first time after the dura (a covering of the brain) was pulled back is an experience I will never forget. As you can imagine, I was inspired just by having a neurosurgeon in the room.
So far Term 2 has been intense but I have enjoyed it and I am on top of my work for once! I know these 5 weeks will give me the confidence boost I need with the exams drawing slowly nearer. On Sunday, we went as a flat to the local watering hole where I watched three of my flatmates devour 50 chicken wings between them before playing the QI board game. Well… there are worse ways to spend a Sunday evening.
Did you know that Scotland won the first ever elephant polo championships? Neither did I until 10pm on Sunday …!
Abbie
Charlie Gallan
21 Jan 2019 14:17
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January 03, 2019
Interviews, Christmas and New Year!
It only feels like 5 seconds ago we were back on the 24thof September nervously walking up the hill to our first day of lectures. I now think reality has hit us all. After the MOSCES most of us went home but I stuck around on campus to help with the medical school interviews. It was weird walking around with no one around on campus but it’s nice not having High School Musical songs sung outside your window at 12 in the morning because the undergrads have finished for Christmas!
The interview days felt a bit surreal. It had only been 11 months since our own and now we were on the other side calming the candidates in the very same room we had all be nervously sat in this January. We know a little more about the interview process and I know it was the common joke amongst us during the day trying to figure out how we ever got in ourselves! My main advice to candidates on the day was to breathe and be a nice person before the interviews, to forget about the interviews afterwards and to stay off The Student Room! It’s a great place if you want to see what is happening with regards to what’s being sent out, but it can easily spark a frenzy of panicked students so it’s best to keep off it!
It was an incredible thing to be allowed to help on the day and I like the fact Warwick does it. You get to talk to actual students before your interview and it gives you a better gauge of what it is like here. It also shows how we are valued at the med school as students and how our perspectives do matter. I also think we are better at calming everyone down because we only went through it 11 months before!
I eventually got back for Christmas and even though I had planned to do work up to the 24th, I can safely say that did not happen! I managed to complete the final lecture notes I had hanging off the back of the last term and sort out all the paperwork I had acquired over the term, but I had originally planned to get more done. However, I needed the break and I now feel like a different person compared to the stress head I was before Christmas.
It’s currently the 30thof December and I’ve been doing a couple of hours of work here and there. However, if there is something I want to do, I will just go out and enjoy myself as I won’t be able to drop everything as easily back on campus. Currently, I am working on my pharmacology notes and amusing myself by writing questions with case studies using characters such as “Albus Dumbledore” who has stomach problems and “Sherlock Holmes” who has heart problems. It’s the little things in life that keep me going!
I am really looking forward to getting back in January as I miss having my own space and weirdly the lectures. I think it’s the routine that I miss, and I am looking forward to clinical skills this term. Having the OSCES before Christmas puts into context why we are learning these exams every week and I know how to better structure learning in the sessions. I also got my results back from the MOSCES and I passed 3 out of the 4 stations only missing out on ONE mark. ONE MARK. I was honestly surprised at my scores and I was happy for the rest of the day! I’m not too fussed about failing the fourth station (one mark!) as I know what you need to look for. I think my problem was the timing and nerves. I kept pausing for 10 seconds trying to remember what came next despite having practised it up to 10 times. We get written feedback in January which I am looking forward to as it provides us with more details than just the marks alone (that one mark will haunt me forever).
I am also looking forward to getting into the hospitals and having our first bedside teaching sessions! It is going to be incredible to finally meet patients and apply our knowledge in a clinical setting rather than just cramming it into our heads for the summer exam. I am hoping it will help me to remember the material as I can apply it to real patients with real problems. I am also thankful for the fact I am in the afternoons for my sessions as it means I only have to get the 6:20am bus once a week instead of twice.
Bring on 2019!
Happy new year
Abbie
Charlie Gallan
03 Jan 2019 13:40
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December 21, 2018
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas…
Christmas has finally arrived! I’m currently heading home writing this blog and I am very much looking forward to just sleeping. We have had a busy couple of weeks, so it’s been a final push towards the end of the term.
I had my final 2018 student seminar session where we played “Pin the ECG on Santa” and all wore matching Christmas jumpers which amazingly had not been co-ordinated. One of the people teaching me is my medic dad so I can guess you call it family intuition! They have both been amazing this term along with the ECG session the cardiac society put on for us, the physiology and anatomy days and the MOSCE prep day which have also been lifesavers. There is so much support here, no one wants anyone to fall behind, which builds a sense of camaraderie in the med school. We also had a Christmas-themed CBL where we exchanged secret Santa presents! I received a bumblebee notebook, someone knows me so well!
We had our final anatomy session of 2018 in the surgical training centre, which was incredible. We were privileged enough to experience fresh tissue which had been donated for medical teaching use. It was something I will never forget. We were able to hold hearts, kidneys and livers and identify structures that we had learnt over the two blocks. All the time I kept thinking about how these were once keeping someone alive and had done so for 80ish years (I don’t know details about the donors, so this is just an estimate). We were also shown a working chest with the lungs inflating. I got to feel the lungs expand and feel every alveolus open which felt like small bubbles under my fingers. It was an amazing opportunity. I got to inflate the lungs and I was surprised as to how much I needed to inflate the bag to get the lungs to initially expand. In all honesty, this really should not have been a surprise as we had learnt about the force needed to open the lungs in a lecture… so I guess I need to go back over that one!
In the evening my amazing flatmates had thrown a surprise birthday party to top off an incredible day for someone who wants to pursue surgery as a career. We had lots of food, and a game which got brutal between some of the more competitive ones. I felt really touched as it’s been a tough couple of weeks with block 2, as physiology is just something I’ve not got on well with, so to have this to end the term really brought my spirits up.
We only had one more thing to do. MOSCES. These were mocks of our OSCE exams in the summer which meant that for 12 solid hours in our kitchen we practised all our examinations. I now know my friends’ hands back to front and can finally pronounce “Leukonychia” and “Koilonychia” which I suppose is good considering I will be using these terms for the rest of my life. It was very odd for my non-medic flatmates to walk into the kitchen to see us tapping each other’s stomachs. Perks of living with medics I suppose….
I had my MOSCE on Tuesday and was nervous, especially as I was in the same corridor as I was for my interview back in January. I don’t know my result yet. I did run out of time on a station which I had practised repeatedly in our kitchen and was way undertime. This was frustrating as I know I would have dropped marks there but it’s a good indication for next year. I also keep second guessing myself over what I said and what I didn’t say, and I know I missed a few things out when it came to another one of the stations. However, if I did fail (and that’s perfectly fine) I get 1:1 with our head of Clinical Skills so its all win I guess!
I am going to try and have a break over Christmas, I have a list of things to do and some final lectures to note from block, 2 but I want to make sure I have a couple of days where I don’t think about medicine. If I have learnt anything this block, it’s that it’s important to forget about medicine for 24 hours.
I am really looking forward to the next block: Brains! This is where my undergraduate degree will hopefully help. I love everything to do with the neuro side of things, so I am hoping that I will get to grips a bit more easily with this block. I also want to be able to help others who might struggle with it as so many people have helped me this year… but only time will tell! Merry Christmas guys!
Hope you all have a brilliant Christmas and an amazing New Year !
Abbie
Charlie Gallan
21 Dec 2018 12:10
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December 04, 2018
Our First Patient
These past two weeks have brought the first time we have had contact with patients. I had been looking forward to this for a while as it is nice to put into context the hundreds of hours of studying and lectures.
Understandably we were nervous - it was the first time talking to someone as a medical student and being in the patient’s home made it even more nerve-wracking. However, the experience was incredible in the end. I can’t say too much to protect patient identity, but our patient was lovely and made us all coffee and biscuits before we had even sat down! They were fiercely independent and had recovered quickly from what was a major operation. Our case had links to our teaching at the medical school, so it was nice to have reassurance that what we are learning now does have clinical application. The long hours can make it seem less so! It was interesting to talk to the patient and find out what was important to them with regards to their health. For this person it was being able to do their gardening. It provided food for thought about tailoring care to enable the patient to live as normal a life as possible and this includes allowing them to participate in activities that they find enjoyable.
We also had the opportunity to chat to healthcare professionals, including a strong-minded nurse who fought for their patients. We get told to always listen to the nurses as they see the patients more than us so have a better understanding of their needs than we do! This particular nurse was not afraid to argue with consultants about what was best for their patients. I can only hope to work with nurses like this when I graduate. We were also told about the funding nature of the NHS. The staff had to hold regular fundraising days to obtain the exercise equipment they needed for the patients’ recovery. It was clearly frustrating that the NHS did not provide this funding but due to the selflessness of the staff, they were able to fund the gym to enable patients to get the most out of their recovery as possible.
It was a long day but we were all grateful to have had the chance to see patients. It was a welcome change to the timetable and we took a lot from the day. It’s easy to be blinded by science teaching and trying to get your head around everything, but it’s good to have a reminder that there are more important things that matter to the patient that the science behind their condition.
We also had Warwick Take Me Out recently, which was a brilliant end to the week. It was the same set up as the TV show except the girls had balloons instead of lights (also the reason I decided to sit as far away from the things (balloons not girls) as humanly possible). We had five guys from the med school (and a couple of non-medics) come and try and get a date. I am pleased to say no one went home without a date and the dates included vouchers for Nandos and Waggas … something the whole of the lecture theatre was envious of and had considered putting themselves forward for just for the prospect of free food. The evening was run by Warwick Marrow and all money raised went to the charity, which will contribute to the £47 it takes to sign up one person to the register.
We are all looking forward to Christmas now. The whole year is pretty tired and ready to break for the holidays. Personally, I am looking forward to sleeping. A lot. I am also excited for the Warwick Medical School interviews for the 2019 cohort. I remember being at mine in January of this year chatting to the current students, so it will be nice to see the process from the other side! If there are any prospective students reading this, good luck! Treat it like a normal conversation - it will be over before you know it and you’ll move on to checking consistently for the decision email! (Just don’t check every five minutes like I did …. You’ll go mad).
Abbie
Charlie Gallan
04 Dec 2018 08:33
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