All 37 entries tagged Joanne
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March 27, 2017
2 blocks down, just 6 more to go!
I can’t believe I’ve reached the end of my second specialist clinical placement, 2 down, just 6 more to go! I enjoyed my time on the paediatric ward. Paediatric history and examination is obviously very different to adult medicine, the differential diagnosis can also be completely different which takes some getting used to! I’m also not used to being around babies or young children so I was quite nervous around them at first but over the 6 weeks after taking lots of histories and examining lots of children of all ages I’m pleased with how much I improved. I can make a neurological exam a fun game and can see the tonsils of the iratest of toddlers and even get nods to yes or no questions from a stubbornly silent child.
I’m now leaving the relative safety of the children’s ward and moving back into the world of adult medicine, starting with the Obstetrics and Gynaecology block. Last year in Core Clinical Education we spent several shifts on the labour ward and with the community midwives, I got to see lots of babies been born and attended antenatal and postnatal check-ups with the midwives. In the O&G speciality block in Phase 3 we will spend some time on the labour ward but will also be in the clinics seeing women with problems during and after their pregnancy. On the gynaecology side, we will be in theatre and clinics seeing a variety of conditions that affect women of all ages.
As well as being in hospital I’ve been busy in my role as president of the Psychiatry society. We’ve had two events in the last few weeks that we organised with the GP society. Both events were on topics that we don’t receive much teaching on in medical school, sexual abuse and eating disorders, both taboo subjects that we as future healthcare professionals need to know about. Our Sexual Abuse Awareness evening had a talk from a Paediatrician who specialised in safeguarding children as well as a talk from a representative from a local charity CRASAC that supports victims of sexual abuse Hearing practical advice about how victims of abuse are assessed and supported by the health service and powerful stories from survivors who receive ongoing support from CRASAC was really powerful and generated a lot of discussion. Hearing personal stories helps us as medical students to understand these sensitive issues so we can be better prepared to help our patients in the future who may have experienced these issues first hand. The same was true of our Eating disorder awareness evening, where we had a talk from a Psychiatry trainee who has worked at an eating disorder treatment centre and a talk from a BEAT (an eating disorder charity) Young ambassador. Hearing from the young ambassador about their own personal experience of suffering from an eating disorder put the medical information from our other speaker in context and was incredibly moving. The turnout for both these events was great and everyone had lots of questions. It’s great to be involved in organising these events and inspiring other students to be passionate about often neglected subjects.
I think I’ve said before that one of the best things about medical school is that there is always a society or club that you can get involved in no matter what your interests or passions. Getting involved extracurricular activities does help your CV, but for me it keeps me motivated and stops me getting bogged down in medicine too much. Sometimes you can get to wrapped up in the seemingly never ending cycle of placements, sign offs and exams and having something else to focus on helps me keep some perspective. So here’s to block 3 of 8-bring on Obstetrics and Gynaecology!
Joanne
Luke Pemberton
27 Mar 2017 09:39
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March 07, 2017
Life on the children’s ward
Well I survived my first graded OSLER which took place in the last week of my General Practice block. It was hard to take the history in ten minutes and answering lots of questions about differential diagnosis and investigations from the examiners was daunting but I received really positive feedback and I’m very happy with that after my first senior rotation! 3 weeks on and I’m now half way through my child health block at Warwick Hospital. It’s strange been back in hospital having not been in full time since before second year exams. In some ways it feels like a step backwards, from conducting entire consultations and delivering management in GP, I’ve now gone back to loitering behind a consultant on ward rounds and standing sheepishly in the corner waiting to present cases.
At Warwick hospital our placement is organised around time on the children’s ward, the special care baby unit and in outpatient clinics. The children’s ward is a very busy place and very different to other wards. There is a playroom and all the walls are covered in animal paintings and each bay or cubicle is full of family members and a variety of toys. Many children are sent straight to the ward and bypass A&E so there are lots of new patients every day, which means there are lots of people for medical students to clerk! Conducting histories and examinations in children can be tricky to say the least; histories often come from multiple people, parents, grandparents, school staff and the child themselves if they are old enough. Histories are taken while shouting over the top of a screaming child and examinations are opportunistically performed on children trying to wriggle away!
The special care baby unit (SCBU) in contrast is the quietest place in the hospital. This is for premature babies (under 34 weeks or under 2.5kg) and term babies who need additional care. We have lots to learn about common problems that can occur in premature babies and in the immediate postnatal period so there is lots to learn on SCBU. It’s also a great place to get to grips with how to look after newborn babies-something which most of us have little experience of! We can also visit newborns on the postnatal ward and help with the newborn baby checks which is always fun.
In contrast to UHCW, Warwick children’s department is very small but there are still lots of clinics to attend. There are some specialist clinics, for example for children diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and there are general clinics with a wide variety of conditions. For example in clinic today I saw children presenting with bed wetting, abdominal pain, and headaches as well as children who just weren’t gaining weight. A lot of what paediatricians do is reassure parents and give advice about normal development in children, this may seem a bit dull at first but they have to always consider more sinister causes and ensure these are ruled out. Children can often present with non-specific symptoms and it can be difficult to take a good history, so from what I have seen so far I think you need to be a good detective in order to succeed in paediatrics-something I will need to practice!
Joanne
Luke Pemberton
07 Mar 2017 10:46
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January 16, 2017
New Year's resolutions…
The start of a new year is always filled with hope and ambitious plans for the year ahead. For myself my new year’s resolutions were to continue to maintain a good work/life balance so I had time to exercise and look after myself and I also wanted to work consistently throughout the year so I could avoid the exam panic that I experienced in my second year. Two weeks in and my first specialist clinical placement (SCP) is creating problems for both my resolutions!
My first SCP is in General Practice. I was lucky to get my top choice of practice which means I can cycle or walk to my placement, this helps with my new years resolution to keep active, however the days in GP are very long so the work/life balance is a bit skewed at the moment. I really enjoyed our GP placements in second year, so was looking forward to it this year. Now that we are 3rdyear students we are expected to be able to complete the whole consultation (including management) for most cases. This was really scary at first, but even just two weeks in I can see how much I have improved. In my first week I wasn’t even sure of my examination findings and would let the GP take over for the management part of the consultation but now I am happy reporting my findings and saying what I think, safe in the knowledge that the GP will correct me if I’m completely wrong!
I’m also really enjoying the variety that comes with GP. Not only do you see medical conditions affecting all the different systems of the body but there is also a big range in terms of severity. It’s certainly not just coughs and colds! I also enjoy getting to know patients better, something we are encouraged to do in GP. The social aspects of the history are very important in GP, the job a person does may affect their illness or pain management and their situation at home may have a bigger impact on their mental health than any medication we can give. As a GP you need to understand the patient and their illness in the context of their life, something that is often forgotten in other specialities.
One skill in particular that is very important in GP which I still need to develop, is learning that it is ok to do nothing. It’s sometimes much harder to listen to a history from a patient who has been really unwell with a terrible cough and who is short of breath and tell them that they don’t have a chest infection and just need rest and paracetamol, than it is to hand out a prescription. During medical school I’ve been trained to recognise signs of illness and what to do when I find them, but saying to a patient that you don’t think anything is wrong and being confident in that decision is a skill in itself. Knowing when to do nothing and stopping unnecessary medications are a huge part of a GP’s workload. We have visited local care homes with our GP tutors and most of the visit has been crossing off unnecessary medications which might actually be doing more harm than good. All Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath which says “Do no harm”, I now understand that “Do no harm” isn’t just about treating disease, it’s knowing when not to treat, and that is actually much harder.
Joanne
Luke Pemberton
16 Jan 2017 15:25
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December 13, 2016
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas…
For myself and the other 3rdyears it’s the start of our Christmas holidays. The 2ndyears have already had a week off, the poor first years still have a week to go and the 4thyears are in finals revision mode! I managed to conquer the data analysis of my SSC2 project and handed my project in on time (phew!), however the work on my project doesn’t stop there. My supervisor wants us to publish which would be very exciting but this will inevitably mean more writing and more stats (boo!).
Since our 8 week project finished we have been on Advanced Cases 2 which has been a mixture of lectures and time in hospital to refresh our clinical skills before our specialist placements in January. The lectures in AC2 have mostly been revision as well as information about our upcoming specialist blocks. It’s been really exciting to hear what we will be doing in our specialist blocks but also terrifying. My last block is the Musculoskeletal block, and hearing about the OSLER (a clinical exam) we will do at the end of that block terrified me. At that point next year I’ll be 6 weeks away from finals! My first block in January is GP, which I think will be a really good introduction to all aspects of medicine and a chance to practice all my examinations and histories. The GP block is going to have dedicated teaching days which sounds really helpful and we are also going to have filmed consultations. This sounds horrible but it’s actually really helpful. You might realise that when talking to patients you are always nervously biting your lip or that you say “like” in every sentence (I can’t help myself!).watching yourself on video gives you a chance to work on these bad habits as well as identifying things that you are good at and need to keep doing. The scary thing about the GP block is the “independent consultations”. This is where my clinical partner and I will take an entire consultation with a patient and only consult the GP at the end to see if we did everything right-eek!
Also during AC2 we started working with our new CBL groups. Having been with my first CBL group for 2 years I didn’t really want to change as we all got on so well but as a Doctor you will be changing teams every 4-6months so it’s important that get used to working with different groups of people. Our first task as a new CBL group was a small presentation on complementary and alternative medicines, not everyone’s favourite topic but certainly an interesting one! Although I didn’t know the people in my new group very well we all worked well together with the help of some home baked cookies thanks to one of my new CBL colleagues!
Over the last few weeks I’ve also been busy with The Psychiatry Society as we prepared for our December event “The West Midlands Forensic Psychiatry Symposium”. We had students from Birmingham and Keele attend, and a great turnout from Warwick Students. It’s been great working with the committee on such a big event and I’m excited for our upcoming events in the new year! Working with other students on the committee from other year groups reminds me of how far I’ve come, I can’t believe I’m now a 3rdyear medical student entering my final year of clinical placements. Here’s to 2017!!!
Joanne
Luke Pemberton
13 Dec 2016 15:06
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November 22, 2016
Returning to the wards…
Well it’s the final working day of my 8 week student selected component (SSC2) and unfortunately I haven’t quite finished my project, things always take longer than you expect and data analysis is no exception. I’ll have to work hard over the remaining weeks to meet the deadline but at least the problem I have is too much data rather than too little! I’ve really enjoyed my project, it’s been totally different to any research I’ve ever done before and the results are quite interesting so hopefully I will be able to publish them in a journal. As we have entered third year we’ve already had talks on the application process for the UK Foundation programme, one of the things you can score points on is publications. While I was lucky to publish during my PhD, for other students, SSC2 is a unique opportunity to get involved in a project that they could publish and boost their score (and their CV!).
I’ve also been settling into my new role as President of the Psychiatry Society, we’ve had a few meetings now and had our first event, which was a great success, and are planning a West Midlands wide symposium on Forensic Psychiatry before Christmas. I was already interested in psychiatry due to my previous degree but it’s not the most popular speciality. Been involved in a society puts me in touch with like-minded people and gives everyone an opportunity to get involved in something they are passionate about. There are societies for lots of different branches of medicine here at Warwick so no matter what your interests you’ll be able to find a group of like-minded people to work with. As well as all the extra-curricular activities you’ll find within the medical school if you look a little further there are lots of amazing opportunities out there. The medical school inform us of prizes or conference bursaries we might want to apply for and I myself decided to apply for a Pathfinder fellowship from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, this is a scheme designed to nurture people interested in psychiatry from the end of medical school until they apply for speciality training. After a scary interview in London I was told I had been successful so I’m really excited to be part of this national scheme. All the Royal Colleges have discounts and prizes for students and many of them offer mentoring opportunities. It really pays to keep your eyes open for these opportunities as they are great for your CV and sometimes the purse strings!
Next week the 3rd years return to lectures two days a week and then spend the rest of the week in hospital. This is Advanced cases 2, lectures to prepare us for our speciality blocks in January and a chance to refresh our clinical skills. I’m going to be based at the large hospital in Coventry, UHCW. Myself and a group of other students have been assigned to a cardiologist, gastroenterologist, palliative care doctor, oncologist and some anaesthetists who we can all spend time with. I’ve not spent time in some of these specialties yet so I think I’ll try and make the most of them as next year our timetables aren’t as flexible.
Medicine is really what you make of it, be it how many extra-curricular commitments you have, how you use your clinical placements or how you study from lectures. Sometimes I make life difficult for myself by trying to squeeze too much in, but if I’ll only be a medical student once and I’m determined to make the most of the freedom being a student brings.. at least until I have to start revising for finals!
Joanne
Luke Pemberton
22 Nov 2016 13:08
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