All 30 entries tagged Jordan

The Power of Positivity

How is my Psychiatry block treating me? Well, I’m enjoying it more than I thought I would! I mentioned in my last blog about the clinical skills lab; well now I can report back as to what it was like. The skills lab is basically a simulated practice of how we would manage a psychiatric patient. The Medical School get professional actors to act out a “character” and we get a chance to practice taking a history from them as if they were a real patient. The “character” I got to talk to was a patient who had MUS (Medically unexplained symptoms). This is an interesting condition as the character was convinced they had stomach cancer and were experiencing symptoms. However, they had been investigated by specialists and there was no sign of cancer, so the symptoms were suspected to be psychiatric in nature. This doesn’t mean that the patient is making it up at all – in this condition, the patient experiences these symptoms as if they were real. However, they were not due to cancer, and could be eased by psychological talking therapies and psychiatric treatment. It was a difficult one to do as you have to be very careful to listen carefully and acknowledge that the patient IS experiencing these symptoms but also have in the back of your mind that the patient doesn’t have cancer. I wasn’t sure how to do this, but went for something reassuring such as “I can see that the symptoms you are experiencing are distressing for you”. Overall it was a very useful learning experience as psychiatric histories can be difficult.

This week I also had some stressful news – I’ve been hacked! Someone was trying to log into my personal email addresses and social media accounts. Luckily, they didn’t access anything, but it still scared me into changing all my passwords and wiping my laptop and phone etc in case they were bugged. I always think you can’t be too paranoid about these things so I changed everything. I think my paranoia about being hacked in that week probably met the diagnostic criteria for Paranoid Personality Disorder, but hopefully everything is okay now I’ve changed my passwords!

Every Tuesday we have small group teaching on psychiatric topics to help pad out and support the clinical experiences we are getting. This week it was on the topic of psychopharmacology (drugs used in mental health). It was exciting as a lot of the teaching was on how to use these drugs and side effects, considerations etc, which makes it very clear that we need to be stepping up our knowledge into actually managing patients ourselves. It is slightly scary that in a year’s time exactly we will be sitting our final exams and soon after be qualified doctors…yikes! The safety blanket of being a student, where it is perfectly acceptable to say “I don’t know” will be replaced by actually having to look after patients (albeit with support).

On Wednesday of this week we also had a CAMHS clinic (Child and Adolescent Mental Health), where we sat in with a consultant who was seeing children and teenagers. I enjoyed this as the child side of mental health focuses around development and family issues which means that you are not only dealing with the patient, but often parents, school, social services. I really enjoyed this clinic and our consultant was fantastic and very good at explaining what was going on. I think we must have done okay as the consultant then contacted the Psychiatry coordinator and gave some lovely positive feedback about us. Often a lot of feedback in medicine is negative or neutral and rarely given at all, so it really does mean a lot to get some positive feedback. It reassures us that we are doing everything right and gives us a morale boost. At a time of generally low morale in the NHS, positive feedback can be a very powerful tool to tell us when something goes right. One consultant who I worked with in my gap year between my first degree and medicine pioneered “Learning from Excellence” which formalises positive feedback in the same way that incident reporting is formalised. Positivity can be a powerful tool against burn-out and understaffing. Google “Learning from Excellence” to learn more about the philosophy – it may change your perspective and encourage you to offer positive feedback for a good experience. That’s all for this week – remember to say so if you have a good experience!

Eden Villiers : 27 Jan 2020 08:43 |  Tags: Jordan Mbchb Patients Student Wards Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Dr Freud eat your heart out…

This week brought the return to University after the Christmas holiday and also the start of our Specialist Clinical Placement (SCP) in Psychiatry. I suppose a good place to start would be with an introduction of what the area of Psychiatry IS. Psychiatry is a branch of medicine which deals with the mind, behaviour, thoughts. Psychiatrists are qualified doctors who then specialise in treating patients with varied conditions such as depression, anxiety, phobias, bipolar disease, schizophrenia, ADHD, learning disability and others. Psychiatry is an old medical discipline which was developed throughout the 20^thCentury (i.e. by Doctor Sigmund Freud and others) and has seen some large advances in recent years as more patients are cared for in the community.

I am in third year and this placement lasts for 6 weeks in total, but we have had some exposure to Psych before. In first year our “Brain and Behaviour” module included teaching on common mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety and we were also introduced to the complexities of history taking with a mental health patient. Then in second year, we had a whole week where we were allocated on placement to a Psychiatric service – ours was Learning Disability. Towards the end of second year we also had a day of clinical skills scenarios, where trained actors come in for the day and act as a patient who we then have to take a history from, while a tutor and other students watch. We were then given feedback on what we had done well and what we could improve on. Now we are in third year we have a whole 6 weeks where we have time in community mental health, acute care, old age care and Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CAHMS). Over the course of this 6 weeks block we are expected to become more comfortable taking a history from a real Psychiatric patient and develop our diagnostic and management skills with these patients.

The block started with 2 days of introductory presentations, covering the main psychiatric conditions to give us a strong grounding to then go onto placement with. These were informative (albeit long) days. Then on Wednesday, we went to our placement just outside Coventry to meet our consultant and the rest of the team. First was a presentation of an interesting case by one of the Junior Doctors, but unfortunately due to technical issues the presentation didn’t go ahead and instead one of the consultants just spoke about a recent patient instead. Then we went to our consultant’s clinic on ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), which was for adults who thought they might have the condition. Right there was myth Number 1 challenged – I had always thought only children had ADHD as this seems to always be what we see on TV, but now I know this is completely wrong! In fact, lots of adults are coming forward for diagnosis and treatment after struggling to manage for years. Overall, it was really interesting and we were lucky to get the opportunity as not many Psychiatrists specialise in ADHD.

So, what’s the plan for next week? Well, we are shadowing our consultant and their other job working in a Psychiatric day hospital which should be fascinating. Then, on Tuesday we have a clinical skills lab with simulated patients (i.e. actors), which we have been told are even more challenging than last year.

Eden Villiers : 13 Jan 2020 09:08 |  Tags: Jordan Mbchb Patients Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Books, Turkey and Interviews

Here it is, Merry Christmas! The previous two weeks have been the lead up to Christmas and I’ve had some much needed down-time and relaxation. I’ve been doing some reading, and you guessed it, its medical. I’ve been reading ”Unnatural Causes”, which is the autobiography of a forensic pathologist who performs post-mortems and visits crime scenes when the police are suspicious about the cause of death. It’s quite interesting learning about a doctor who has a role which involves no work with (live!) patients. It goes to show that the medical profession is a broad church, with lots of different potential roles.

Another thing which always happens at Christmas is the inevitable questions from family members about their medical problems and the inevitable awkward explanation that I am not in fact a doctor at all….Most awkward is when grandparents introduce me as the doctor which of course isn’t true and I have to explain that I’m only a student with basically very little useful knowledge at all. Unless they want to know the steps in the vitamin D cycle of course (probably not very useful…)

This week I also received an email from my research project supervisor about my project. Now you may remember that I have now submitted my project, but we both think there may be something interesting in our results. To that end, we want to maybe do some more work on the project or look to submit an article to a journal. My supervisor emailed me with some leads on where we could take the project next, and I just need to consider the best way forward. Watch this space!

I think the interviews for Warwick have taken place already and most applicants will be waiting to hear back. Good luck if you are waiting – if it was meant to be, it will happen. If you don’t get a place, don’t worry, dust yourself off and try again next year! If you have an interview coming up, the only advice I can offer is to be yourself. I helped with the interviewing a couple of years ago and it is very obvious to the interviewers when an interviewee is stretching the truth or not being genuine. You’ve done the work experience, so just be yourself and let your personality shine. You’ve got this!

By the time of my next blog, I will have started my first Specialist Clinical Placement in Psychiatry. I’m nervous; but more because of fear of the unknown than anything else. Wish me luck!

Eden Villiers : 02 Jan 2020 11:58 |  Tags: Jordan Mbchb Patients Student Wards Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Christmas!

For the last two weeks we have been thick in the block that is Advanced Cases 2 (AC2). Essentially serving as a refresher and introduction to our Specialist Clinical Placements (SCPs) which start after Christmas and of which you hear more about in the future as I go through them!

For every block, in order to pass, we have certain tasks that we need to complete, and for AC2 we have to complete 3 VPCs (or virtual patient cases). These are online packages where you log on and work through a case in order. So you are given first a presentation (i.e. Jack presented with lower back pain) and then there are questions that you have to answer, for example; what are your main diagnoses and what tests would you like to do? For AC2 I have to complete one of these for every one of the 3 weeks of this block. I usually find that online patients are never realistic and often not useful but I was surprised with these ones. They were really well put together and quite realistic! One patient was an elderly gentleman with acute urinary retention, one was a patient with alcohol dependency and the last was a young girl with a sore throat and cough. It was actually quite fun to work through these and was a nice reintroduction to the diagnostic skills we will no doubt need when we start our SCP blocks.

This week I also received my timetable for my first SCP, which is Psychiatry. This is my first SCP and each of these lasts for 6 weeks. Overall I have time spent in different Psychiatric settings, with 1 week in acute psychiatry, 3 weeks in community psychiatry, 1 week in old age psychiatry and the remaining 1 week being an introduction week where we have workshops and lectures to get our knowledge up to speed. I have to admit, I am slightly nervous for starting my first SCP as I don’t want to get there and have the consultants think that I don’t know enough or aren’t good enough. I know this is a feeling common to all medical students at changeover time when we start a new placement and I’m sure it will all work out. That said, I’m going to try and do some reading over the Christmas holiday to make sure I at least know something about the basics!

And so here comes Christmas! We have a month off which is our first break for a while and our last long break until next August. We have 4 weeks off and in those I am going for a short holiday in Vienna to explore the many, many Christmas markets and then coming home for a quiet family Christmas. There may be a few mince pies involved as well!

Eden Villiers : 16 Dec 2019 08:37 |  Tags: Jordan Mbchb Patients Student Wards Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Back to Hospital

This week we ended our research block and started on Advanced Cases 2 (AC2). The idea of AC2 is to get us back into the swing of clinical medicine again, after not doing anything clinical for over 3 months! On Monday and Tuesday this week we had lectures which cover very broad topics: chronic disease management, emergency surgery and revision of diabetes. These lectures are mostly things that we have done before in Phase II, so they serve as revision of core topics and also build slightly on our pre-existing knowledge, with more of a focus on actually managing a patient. Phase I introduced us to the basic science needed for medical practice, Phase II aimed to make us comfortable with clinical history and examination, including some basic diagnosis. Phase III starts here, and the overall emphasis is on how to diagnose and treat people as they come through the door.

Today in hospital we had our first Case Based Discussion of Phase III. A Case Based Discussion is where we go out and find our own patient to talk to, and with this patient we talk to them about why they came into hospital (i.e. take a history) and examine them. Then we meet up with a doctor and have a discussion about what we found out and what we would do to investigate, diagnose and then manage that patient. In our first discussion of Phase III, it is clear that a lot more is expected of us than last year. It was very much clear that we need to not only be able to take a good history and examination, we also need to be focused and able to logically think through diagnoses, eliminating them as we go. It was a bit of a shock to the system to firstly not have done any clinical medicine for months, and secondly, have a lot more expected of us! Needless to say, I was very rusty and not very smooth. I hope that as I get back into the swing of things and become a little bit slicker than I was today…

Eden Villiers : 28 Nov 2019 09:43 |  Tags: Jordan Mbchb Patients Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem