All 32 entries tagged Joanne

Running out of time…

We are now 4 weeks into our 8 week student selected component (SSC2) and I can’t believe how fast time is going! My project involves designing a questionnaire for medical students and alumni of the medical school to investigate the effect of gender on career aspirations of medical students, in particular trying to find out why women don’t choose careers in academic medicine. I spent the first few weeks of my project designing my questionnaire. I even got a bunch of friends to be my test group (in return for Chocolate!) and give me their feedback on the questions. After a few tweaks I was really pleased with the final version and since it was sent out I’ve been franticly checking the response rate! I’ve never done this sort of research project before so I really don’t know what to expect from the results, but thanks to all great students so far who have filled in my survey at least I will have plenty of data to analyse!

As well as getting to grips with my project I’ve been catching up with my extracurricular activities. Everything seemed to come to a grinding halt during revision over the summer so it’s nice to get involved in new projects for the new academic year. The role I’m most excited about is my new role as President of the Psychiatry Society. We have started organising our next events and brainstorming for the future and trying to come up with ways to expend the society so I’m excited for the coming year and working with the rest of the new committee. I also led the first training session of the new year for MedMinds a society that educates schoolchildren about Mental Health. Leading sessions like this is really nerve-wracking, it’s not just public speaking but getting students involved in interactive activities and encouraging participation which can be tricky in a large group. The training session was really busy and full of students from lots of different courses which was great to see. It’s also a nice reminder that while the medical students may be stuck up on Gibbet Hill there are opportunities to step outside the bubble!

I’m also involved in organising a medical education course for my fellow third year students. Myself and another student are in charge of organising the speakers, planning the sessions and the scariest job of all, selecting students to take part in the course from anonymous applications. Medical education is something I’m very interested in for the future, so I’m glad as part of SSC2 I got to take part in a Journal Club on the subject. Journal Clubs in SSC2 are a great opportunity to learn critical appraisal skills, another valuable research skill that all doctors are expected to have.

While I am learning lots of different skills in SSC2, skills which I am actually able to put into practice with my extracurricular activities, I am worried about my total lack of clinical skills! It’s been so long since I’ve been in hospital I’m not sure I’ll be able to take history, or blood for that matter! I’m glad in Advanced Cases 2 before Christmas we have dedicated time in hospital to refresh our skills so we are fully prepared for our specialist placements in January. Not long now!

Joanne

Luke Pemberton : 26 Oct 2016 13:34 |  Tags: Joanne Mbchb Warwick |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Hello Phase 3!

After a long summer stuck in my study myself and the other 2^nd year students sat our exams in September. Two week later we all made our way, nervously, to the Medical School to see if our names were on the pass list. Walking up from the main campus seemed to take forever as I nervously chatted to my friends, trying to keep it together and stay positive. Well, my name was there which meant that I was officially a 3^rd year medical student entering Phase 3! There was little time to celebrate as we officially started Phase 3 the following day, thus I started phase 3 regretting how much wine I had consumed the night before!

Phase 3 consists of an 8 week research project (SSC2), followed by 3 weeks of lectures and hospital placements designed to get us back up to speed before we start our specialist placements in the new year. The first week of our research project has been lecture based, designed to give us research skills we may need to complete our projects. I used to work in laboratory research with animal models of psychiatric disease but decided that for my SSC2 project I wanted to do something completely different. I am designing a questionnaire to investigate the effect of gender on career aspirations of medical students, in particular trying to find out why women don’t choose careers in academic medicine (where you combine clinical work with research). This project will allow me to develop completely new research skills and work in a totally different area which will be really interesting. Other students are going back to labs they used to work in before medical school, others are conducting audits in the local hospitals and some are even going to Africa as part of their projects. It’s going to be a really fun 8 weeks and a chance to do something completely unique!

As well as getting to grips with my research project I also want to use SSC2 as a chance to get my work/life balance back on track. I found it difficult to get the right balance during Core Clinical Education last year when we spent long days in hospital and revision doesn’t exactly bring out my healthy side! The problem is that this is what I’ve signed up to do, come January I’ll be doing my final clinical placements in hospitals and as the year progresses finals will be ever closer, and once I graduate I’ll be at the mercy of a hospital rota. I have to try and get the balance right now and maintain it so I don’t let it slip again either in final year or once I graduate. Coping with stress and not letting work take over your life is a big part of life as a doctor and something I still need to learn! So here’s to SSC2 and the start of phase 3. Only 16 months until finals!

Joanne

Luke Pemberton : 03 Oct 2016 09:54 |  Tags: Joanne Mbchb Student Warwick |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Hello Summer, Goodbye Summer

After finishing exams in June last year, I had a long summer of relaxation ahead. Starting second year with exams a whole year away, a perhaps undeserved, sense of complacency set in. Well that bubble has officially burst, this week marks the end of Core Clinical Education 3 and the start of 4 weeks’ revision, it sure is going to be a fun summer!

For CCE3 I’ve been on both Cardiology and Urology placements. Experiencing both medical and surgical specialities has been an important part of CCE. Medics and Surgeons approach both the history and examination of a patient very differently. A history and examination in a GP surgery is another beast again! I’ve really enjoyed all of our GP placements and during our CCE3 placement we also conducted an audit. Conducting audits is a required part of your foundation doctor year 1 portfolio, this means you have to complete one in order to become fully registered with the GMC and it is expected at all stages of your medical career. It’s also a good way to get involved in research and get the opportunity to present at conferences, something that some of the current third year students did at this year’s Royal College of General Practitioners Conference which was held at Warwick this year.

In CCE3 we also had the last of our T-DOCs where we learn how to perform certain clinical tasks like blood taking. At George Elliot I’ve had training on different injection techniques, where I learnt just how deep an intramuscular injection really goes, as well as catheterisation. It’s scary that we can actually do all these things, under supervision of course!

A slightly more frivolous skill for a medical student to master is being able to track down free food. As part of my GP placement we attended local training with GPs with lunch provided. I also got invited to an Endocrinology Seminar after sitting in on the Diabetes clinic where one of the F1s gave a talk about common endocrine emergencies (great revision for me!) and again lunch was provided. Perhaps the best free food I’ve had was at a dinner at a local hotel organised by local psychiatrists to learn about a new antipsychotic with an internationally renowned speaker. While all these occasions involved a free meal they also involved extra and unexpected teaching and networking opportunities. If you get involved and take advantage of all the opportunities available in hospital many more find their way to you, this I think is the take home message from CCE. You can only learn so much from lectures and books, you need to be out there on the wards, in clinics, in theatre. You might not be interested in everything you see but being out there and visible to your seniors is worth it for the extra opportunities that find you along the way. I really have enjoyed the last 30 weeks in hospital where I have gone from a nervous student who fainted in her first week on the wards to a fully-fledged clinical medical student who goes up to any patient and asks to take a history, who takes blood and puts in cannulas for the F1s, who even scrubs in on surgery! It’s sad to be leaving hospital now and entering revision hibernation mode but I will hopefully speak to you all again when I am officially a 3rd year medical student-keep your fingers crossed for me!

Joanne

Megan Earle : 04 Aug 2016 15:19 |  Tags: Joanne Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

It’s as simple as ABCDE

As a medical student we are usually quite far from an emergency situation, but that doesn’t mean it will stay like that forever, we need to know how to manage an emergency situation in case it does happen while we are students. Even as students we may find ourselves able to do some practical procedures that some nurses on the ward cannot do that are needed in an emergency, such as inserting cannulas or managing an airway. Staying calm under pressure and been able to fully assess a situation are vital skills as a doctor especially when you are the one called to an emergency.

To help us prepare for this all second year medical students are sent on a course designed to teach you how to recognise a deteriorating patient and how to systematically approach and manage an emergency situation. Students at Warwick and UHCW do the AIM course, where as I did the ALERT course at George Eliot. They all teach you the ABCDE approach. A for airway, B for breathing, C for circulation, D for disability and E for exposure/everything else! You work through each part systematically, never moving on until you have secured each part. If your airway isn’t secure you won’t be able to get oxygen to your tissues and organs so this must be assessed first. In Breathing you have to conduct a mini respiratory exam, you might hear some crackles on their chest and start thinking about an infection and sepsis or you might hear a wheeze and think asthma attack. The ABCDE approach isn’t just designed to manage an emergency, it also gives us the framework to find a reason for the deterioration and a diagnosis quickly so we can start the right treatment. In C for circulation you check pulses and blood pressure, you may discover they are hypotensive and need fluids, so then you need IV access. In Disability you check blood sugars, consciousness and pupil responses. Exposure ensures you don’t miss anything, like a rash or a source of bleeding.

As part of the course we had a series of lectures taught around clinical scenarios. What is your approach to the acutely hypotensive patient? ABCDE of course! What is your approach to the unconscious patient? You guessed it ABCDE! In the afternoon we had several practice stations where we all got a chance to manage a situation and receive some feedback on our performance. One of the students was the patient and others in the group could act as helpers as they were needed. In my scenario my patient was unconscious and their airway was compromised so I placed an oropharyngeal airway in, I then made my way through to D and found that they were hypoglycaemic (low blood sugar), I gave them some glucose and they became more responsive, so much so that they started to gag on the oropharyngeal airway. Back to A it was! I removed the airway adjunct and they could breathe on their own. I went back through B, C, D and then onto E. I thought the end was in sight but then they vomited and were making gurgling sounds, back to A again! After some suction everything was ok and the crisis was averted! Although these practice scenarios are obviously very different from the real thing the facilitators try to make it as realistic as possible, if you don’t do something then the patient will deteriorate. In my station if I had forgotten to take to blood sugar levels my patient would have started to have a seizure, so I’m glad I averted that!

I really enjoyed the ALERT course and I think it helped me a lot that I have been volunteering as a helper for the Advanced Life support course run at UHCW. The ALS course is for doctors and nurses working in emergency areas and also uses an ABCDE approach but for more advanced and life threatening scenarios. It is run in a very similar way with actors playing patients and helpers who the candidate can call on to help them as they manage the scenario. Through the Warwick Emergency Medicine and Trauma Society I have been able to volunteer for this which has meant I have acted as a helper to the candidates on the ALS course, which certainly helped me in my own practice situation! Hopefully when I’m getting ready to start my first job as an FY1 in 2 years’ time I won’t find the ALS course too scary and will be ready when I’m that doctor on call!

Joanne

Catrin Davies : 18 Jul 2016 10:04 |  Tags: Joanne Mbchb Patients Student Wards Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

10 fingers and 10 toes

Over the course of Core Clinical Education we have had several different themes running throughout. CCE1 was history and examination, CCE2 was investigations and CCE3 focused on basic management. Amongst all this we have also had several speciality areas which have been mixed in amongst all this; Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Orthopaedics, Psychiatry and Child Heath.

For Obstetrics and Gynaecology, we all had the chance to attend shifts on the Labour Ward and spend time with the community midwives. Everyone has an orthopaedics rotation at some point during CCE so we can learn about different types of fractures. For Psychiatry we all attended a Clinical case day with simulated patients to prepare us for our week long psychiatry placements. For child health we have covered a few different topics over the course of CCE which I have thoroughly enjoyed.

In CCE1 the focus was on the new-born assessment, screening programmes and baby checks. We had tutorials to take us through the theory and recap some material from Block 5 in Phase 1. We also spent a day split between the paediatric ward and the special care baby unit. Here we got the chance to see a baby check. The baby I observed in CCE1 was not impressed with us and the paediatrician moved at lightning speed so this week I arranged some time with one of the teaching fellows at George Eliot who specialises in paediatrics.

We found a very chilled out baby and she talked me through the baby check step by step and allowed me the chance to perform some of the examination. Listening to a new-born baby’s heart beating at 150 beats per minute is a bit alarming at first but for babies this is perfectly normal (compared to adults where our heart beat should be 60-90bpm). Getting some hands on experience is invaluable and I am so grateful for the parents who let me practice on their precious new-born.

In CCE2 the focus for child health was acute paediatric medicine. We had some lectures introducing us to history and examination in children. The questions in a paediatric history seem to be endless; you need to ask about the pregnancy, the birth, immunisations, what is their sleep schedule, what do they like to eat, do they have any friends? We spent a morning on the paediatric ward at UHCW speaking to patients and their parents. Some patients are more difficult than others but children are something else entirely, watching the paediatrician exam a wriggly child was as confusing as it was impressive!

In CCE3 the focus has turned to child development. We need to understand how to assess child development and common problems that can cause abnormal development. A full developmental assessment can take up to half an hour and is usually performed by a paediatric registrar. However, we still need to know what the developed milestones are and how we would assess them. We might come across problems in development in GP and we need to be able to assess them competently enough so we can be confident in either providing reassurance or deciding that further investigation and referral is needed.

I have really enjoyed all aspects of the child health theme. Learning the theory is fascinating as the physiology of children is actually very different compared to adults. This year we have had limited practical experience with children in hospital but I have come across plenty in GP. Working with children is hugely rewarding and fun, definitely something to think about when considering future career options!

Joanne

Catrin Davies : 27 Jun 2016 15:22 |  Tags: Children Joanne Mbchb Medicine Paediatrics Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem