All 7 entries tagged Joanne

Exams approaching!

With one week left of our musculoskeletal block before our Easter holidays you would think I would feel more excited. I’m looking forward to a break, catching up with friends and family but I am also acutely aware that I need to revise. I need to revise like I never have before because after the Easter holidays we have our final block (reproduction and child health) and then we have our summative exams. I’ve never had a final exam that tested me on everything before, my previous degree, A levels and even GCSEs were mostly modular so to say I’m nervous is an understatement! One of the biggest things about Warwick is that the focus on group work really does come into its own at this time of year. In my CBL group we have started to do lots of quiz’s and practice questions which is really helpful, we all have slightly different styles so it’s great to try other peoples questions.

Despite my nerves around exams I am looking forward to our Reproduction and Child health block after Easter. We had our final patient visit in the community this week where we met a child with a heath condition and their family. This case was really different to anything else we have seen in the community or in hospital, for a start our patient was too young for us to really talk to so we got most of our information from the parents and health visitors that work with the family. With younger patients the focus on supporting the family as a whole rather than treating the patient in isolation really struck me. Paediatrics is definitely an area I am interested in so I’m looking forward to learning more about it next block.

Another area I’m interested in is psychiatry. The Psychiatry Society here at Warwick have organised a buddy scheme where interested students get paired with a psychiatry trainee. I had my first meeting with my buddy where I got to ask lots of questions while enjoying tea and cake. Hopefully I will be able to shadow my buddy in the summer and also help out in an audit to get more experience in this area-the CV building never ends in medicine!

The list of possible OSCE stations for our summative exam was released this week which was slightly panic inducing and to top it off we were learning how to break bad news in clinical skills this week – not the easiest task! Practicing with a patient actor was really tough as our medical knowledge is still so limited so knowing what to say about diagnosis/prognosis is still a long way off but what we can do is make patents feel listened to and point them in the right direction for questions we can’t answer. Once we are on the wards more next year we might get asked some difficult questions so any practice we can get before then is a bonus!

Elections for MedSoc have also been taking place this week, candidates have been posting you tube videos of their manifestos (worth googling!) and have been bribing us all with cakes which is always welcome! I also managed to visit Warwick Castle for the first time since I moved here 7 months ago – better late than never and I very much enjoyed a well-deserved afternoon off!

Megan Earle : 18 Mar 2015 10:25 |  Tags: Exams Joanne Mbchb Warwick Warwickcastle |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Working 9–5?

What have I learnt so far in my first year of medical school? I’ve learnt what sepsis is and how you treat it, I’ve learnt why babies might pee out of their belly button and I’ve also learnt to juggle! Not the circus kind of juggling, the multi-tasking type!

Since Christmas this has been especially true. We have started our hospital placements, we had our formative OSCE to revise for, we also had our first reflection to submit and we still had all the usual lectures, CBL and self -directed work to do. In order to survive this I have a to-do list that is been constantly updated and a diary full of scribbles to keep me right. My to-do list is never empty but I do get a lot of pleasure from ticking things off and it’s a good reminder on a particularly hard day that you have achieved something, however small that might be!

I found our first official reflection quite difficult to do as it’s not something I have done before. Most of us are quite conscientious students and we are used to critically appraising our performance, but a reflection is quite different. It’s not always something you could do better in an academic or practical sense but perhaps you could cope with better.

The most important aspects of a reflection are your personal feelings, which are often difficult to verbalise let alone write down! I wrote my reflection on how patients with chronic conditions cope in the community and that while I had expected a set of medical problems I was actually confronted by very personal and social issues and how this actually made me feel quite uncomfortable as I was so unprepared for it.

Reflection is part of the junior doctor’s portfolio and professional development for doctors at every level. Getting practice while we are still at medical school may not seem that important at the time but if we can’t reflect now it will be even harder in high pressure situations post medical school without the help of our tutors!

While the juggling act during the day at medical school is difficult enough there are some of us, myself included who also work part-time. Many people choose to work a lot during the holidays to support themselves during term time but I’m working on an evening. Lots of my course mates work in health care part-time but I’m lucky to have found a flexible job on campus as part of the University Student calling team.

It’s my job to maintain relationships with graduates of Warwick and also fundraise with them. Sometimes going to work is an added stress I could do without but other times it’s a great way to do something that isn’t medicine! I also get the chance to call up graduates of the medical school and ask for tips and quiz them about their jobs - so I’m getting careers advice and getting paid for it!

I think it’s important to think about what you will have to juggle while you are at medical school before you get here, there are so many surprises at medical school that you can’t predict so the more organised and prepared you are the better!

Megan Earle : 05 Mar 2015 10:47 |  Tags: Joanne Mbchb Warwick |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

What’s wrong with your bear?

Well it’s the end of another block, so that’s three down, only two more to go before my first year exams. Block 3, Brain and Behaviour, has been a really enjoyable block for me as I have a background in neuroscience.

I have still found it really tough though, despite my background this course is very clinically focused from very early on. This means that we are already interpreting scans and learning drug names and mechanisms of action - not my strongest skills at the moment after only 5 months of Medical school. This early exposure to clinical scenarios and cases is one of the reasons why I love the course at Warwick but it is a totally different approach to my previous degree which does take some getting used to!

This early clinical focus means that right from the first week we are working on our clinical skills. At first it’s in small groups at our Friday hospital sessions, then it’s with individual patients in their homes on our community days and now we are actually putting those skills into practice with patients on the wards during our hospital placements.

In order to develop our clinical skills further we are always receiving feedback from our tutors and our peers but last week we went one step further by recording ourselves during a history consultation. We were all filmed individually taking a history from an actor; we then received feedback from the rest of the small group (who are watching you doing the consultation!) and from a GP facilitator. I was so nervous waiting for my turn but actually received really good feedback from my group.

Watching the video back again I can hardly believe it’s me (I’m sure I don’t sound that squeaky!). Getting the right body language and right questions are skills that we are still developing but it’s great to see how much progress I have made in such a short space of time.

This week I was also pleased to find out that I had passed all the stations in my formative OSCE. An OSCE is not something many people have experience with, you have ten minutes per station (7mins task, 3mins feedback) then the alarm goes and you leave and read the instructions on the door of the next room until the alarm goes again and you start the next task. It’s quite a nerve wracking experience so I’m very relieved that I passed and I feel more prepared for the summative OSCE in the summer.

Sometimes it may not seem it but there is time for fun as a first year medical student, I have started to volunteer with Teddy Bear Hospital, a society that works with young children to teach them about health and hospitals. We have stations about exercise, healthy eating, when to call 999 and also a station where the kids can put bandages and casts on their Teddies. I helped out with a group of Beavers and after an hour dealing with thirty hyperactive 6 years olds Medical school looked a lot easier!

Joanne

Megan Earle : 12 Feb 2015 10:55 |  Tags: Joanne Mbchb Student Teddybearhospital Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Access all areas

Everyone seems to have got over their January blues, people have given up on their new years’ resolutions and everyone has settled into our new routine for this block.

We have started our bedside teaching in hospitals which means we have NHS badges with our names and a very dodgy photo declaring that we are medical students. We spend half a day a week with our clinical tutors visiting different wards of the hospital and getting the chance to practice histories and examinations.

I’m based at Warwick hospital, which is quite small but has great facilities for the medical students. There is a library for students and a study room as well as a room to practice clinical skills, there are also lots of Clinical education fellows who are passionate about teaching and who are often not long qualified themselves so are very sympathetic when we forget things (which happens a lot!).

I was very nervous about going to take a history and examine a real patient, but she was so lovely and patient and said she was happy to help us. We learn so much from patients and the feedback they give us, I’m hoping I can use our hospital placements to really refine my clinical skills and with practice I will hopefully be less nervous!

In addition to my first time on the wards, I also had my formative OSCE this week. This was a small practice version of the exam we will have in the summer which tests our clinical skills in an exam setting. Unlike in the summer exam we were told which skills we would be tested on so we could focus our practice. I have been practicing a lot with my CBL group which has proved invaluable!

The medical school has blood pressure cuffs and resuscitation dummies for us to practice with so we have had a few practice sessions where we all give each other feedback and go through things we aren’t sure on. It’s been very helpful as everyone has slightly different ways of doing things so you can pick up some good tips just from observing!

Another new thing for this block has been the start of our student selected component. This is part of the course we get to pick from several options (including Trauma medicine, Tropical and Infectious diseases and Global Health) a module that we can attend additional sessions on. I chose the Sleep Medicine module as I was quite interested in how sleep is affected in a lot of psychiatric and neurological disorders. I’m really enjoying the sessions so far, we are learning about how sleep can be measured and how disrupted sleep can lead to multiple health problems as well as some strange things such as sleep walking and nocturnal head banging.

These sessions are much less pressured than lectures as we aren’t being examined on them so we can just relax and enjoy learning new things. My group will also be visiting a local sleep laboratory so I will have to remember to bring my pyjamas to that session!

Megan Earle : 09 Feb 2015 09:38 |  Tags: Examination Joanne Mbchb Patients Wards Warwick |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New Year, New Block

After the end of Block 2 my fellow first years and I were desperately in need of a break. I spent the first two weeks catching up on some work, albeit at a much more leisurely pace. It was hard work to motivate myself to do work over the holidays initially but I made some revision notes which will save me lots of time in the Easter holidays and I feel much more organised and prepared for this new block.

After the first two weeks though I decided it was time for a real Christmas break and just gave myself time to relax and enjoy myself! The first semester didn’t allow much time for catching up with family or friends so I really made the most of my time, visited old colleagues in Scotland, caught up with friends and family from Home and even squeezed in a romantic get away with my boyfriend at New Year. I started this Block feeling very relaxed and pleased with myself as I had even managed to do the pre reading but after only 1 week it’s like our 4 week Christmas break never happened!

Our first week of Brain and Behaviour has been pretty full on to say the least. My background is in neuroscience so it’s not all new to me but it’s still a lot of information to take in at once. I love studying the brain, the anatomy is incredible and the disorders very interesting. In our Friday clinical skills session we were all wielding our tuning forks and testing each others reflexes, which was lots of fun and reminded me that medicine isn’t just about lectures and late nights studying.

As well as starting our new block we’ve also had another community day this week. I really enjoy our community days; it’s really interesting to see how healthcare works out in the community especially with people with long term conditions. I feel privileged that people invite us into their homes and tell us all about themselves and they do this just to help us!

We have also been assigned to our hospital based placements for clinical skills. I’m really looking forward to this but also terrified of performing clinical examinations in front of our clinical tutors!

I should probably focus my terror more on our upcoming formative OSCE, this is a mini practice version of our clinical exam in the summer. We have to complete 6 stations testing different clinical skills such as history taking or a respiratory exam, sounds tricky doesn’t it, then factor in the fact that each station is only 7minutes long=PANIC! I’m feeling quite nervous but hopefully over the next few weeks my friends will be willing subjects for me to practice on - one of the many perils of been friends with a medical student, another important one being inappropriate dinner conversation - something to work on over the next 4 years!

Megan Earle : 02 Feb 2015 16:27 |  Tags: Joanne Mbchb Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem