All 5 entries tagged Jordan

Anatomy Day and Transition Week

Week 11 of AC1 kicked off with some lectures and talks about Student Selected Component 2, which is a module we study at the beginning of third year. Although a while away yet, this module is a research module, where we develop a project and conduct some sort of research into a specific area. Because of how involved it can be, it needs a good deal of planning and projects have to go through ethical approval, so it is best to start early. We were shown some of the fantastic projects that Warwick students have done in the past, with these inspiring me to think carefully about what sort of research project I might want to conduct. At the moment I have a few ideas, including something to do with the liver, but no substantial ideas yet, so maybe a task for the Christmas break!

We also had Anatomy Day on Wednesday of week 11, which is a new session introduced this year for our cohort. The format is similar to our anatomy sessions from Year 1 – “stations” which are rotated around, with facilitators on hand to guide, assist and provide a useful prompt to identifying the key anatomical structures. All of the content was clinically themed and we covered mostly surgical and abdominal anatomy. Topics included the anatomy knowledge needed for arterial and venous access (procedures we will start observing/practising from January), and core surgical procedures and incisions. I was slightly anxious about this session as we haven’t touched on a lot of our core anatomy since end of Year 1 exams, but I actually found the whole day to be extremely well organised (as per all of our anatomy teaching), and very useful when about to enter the hospital environment. Warwick is known for its excellent anatomical teaching, and this day did not disappoint. Our exquisite plastinated specimens provide an excellent teaching resource and mean that we have a solid basis of anatomical knowledge on which to build and develop our clinical competence.

Week 12 of this block has been the last week of AC1 and is “Transition week”. This week is designed as our orientation week for our first full time clinical placement which starts in January. We are assigned to specific consultants and specialities and stay in this team for the 10 weeks of Core Clinical Education 1 (January-March). My first team is cardiology and acute medicine, which is a great one to start out with, with cardiac issues being the most common complaint and indeed co-morbidity affecting the patients we will see on our journey through medicine. On Monday of Week 12, my clinical partner and I drove into George Eliot Hospital for a relatively early start at 8:30 to track down our named consultant and begin the clinical phase of our medical course! We sat in on a cardiology clinic and various other sessions and learned plenty from our consultant, including some tips and tricks on how to do our cardiac examinations more efficiently and also the key features of heart failure to elucidate in our histories. I feel as though this has really enforced my previous knowledge, so that when exam time does come around again, it might be easier to remember certain clinical features as I will have seen them in person time and again.

Jordan

Charlie Gallan : 29 Nov 2018 13:57 |  Tags: Jordan Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Our first GP placement and getting ready to go clinical

Today was our first placement in General Practice, which feels like a big moment in the life of any medical student. My clinical partner and I have been placed together as a pair and attached to a small GP surgery based in a village not far from the university. I approached the day with a mixture of trepidation and excitement alike, with a fear of the unknown but excitement at spending the day doing some clinical shadowing. Traffic meant that we arrived only just on time, bang on 9.00am in fact! Despite my nerves and the stressful commute, the practice staff couldn’t have been more welcoming and we were immediately put at ease and felt less daunted.

We were really lucky to be place with a great GP. He was enthusiastic, engaging and managed to test our knowledge without making us feel like we were being interrogated! We learned a lot about some of the common conditions that doctors see in the community, and this also highlighted some areas where we needed to brush up our knowledge (particularly the main examinations!). We also learned about therapeutics and treatments that are available in the community, including the option to refer on to specialist services. The day was a fantastic introduction to our primary care placements which we begin for real from January, and friendly and exciting introduction to the world of primary care medicine.

After coming home from GP, I carried on working on my assessed presentation for my Student Selected Component on Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine. My presentation looks at infectious diseases in German concentration camps during the Second World War. I have chosen this because it draws on my previous knowledge from my History degree. I’m hoping to use the combination of my past and current studies to offer my group a new and (hopefully) interesting take on the subject. It’s nice to be able to re-visit my previous studies (and dust off my old books!) and put them to use in my medical degree.

Next week I have an anatomy revision day, where we revise all of the key anatomy covered in Year 1, giving us the opportunity to ask any lingering questions. This is well timed as it will refresh our knowledge of anatomy ahead of starting our full-time clinical placements at the start of our Core Clinical Education (CCE) block in January. CCE is a 30-week block split into 3, 10-week rotations around the major aspects of medicine and surgery. I am very excited to start full-time clinical placements, and it feels like the last year of hard study has been leading up to this point. My first rotation is Cardiology and Acute Medicine, which I think is a good one to have first as it covers quite a lot of the most common conditions we will see as Foundation Doctors. However, I definitely need to revise my ECG reading techniques in preparation!

Jordan

Charlie Gallan : 23 Nov 2018 08:11 |  Tags: Jordan Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Communication skills, Yoga and making links…

As we go past the halfway point of the Advanced Cases 1 block, I can hardly believe that this term has gone so quickly.

Recently we have been learning about diabetes and autoimmune diseases, such as lupus. Some of the science behind the immunology and renal/kidney teaching has been very complicated (there are a lot of immune cells to learn!) but it has nicely built on our learning from last year. For example, we were taught about chronic kidney disease, but this year we have gone into more detail about the causes of the diseases and the management of the various types of illnesses. It has been the same with our diabetes teaching. We covered diabetes in detail last year and now our teaching has been more clinical and focused mainly on management of the condition. In that way, the last two weeks have nicely brought our year 1 content back to the fore and forced us to revisit kidney anatomy that perhaps some of us would prefer to leave in the past.

Meanwhile, my clinical placements at George Eliot hospital have been continuing. For the last two weeks I have had bedside teaching every Monday. This is where a qualified doctor takes out a small group of students (typically 2-4) and finds them some interesting patients to meet. We would then take the history and conduct an appropriate system examination (or a few). All of this is followed by constructive feedback from our supervisor on technique and content and a walk through some of our differentials and reasoning. This block, our bedside teaching supervisors have expected more from us in terms of diagnosis and management too, whereas in year 1 it was mostly about just taking a basic history and conducting a basic examination.

I took the history from both patients which was useful as I hadn’t conducted a proper history since my OSCEs in June! I struggled to remember all of the parts and forgot to ask about all the relevant risk factors for falls. This was brought up afterwards by the supervisor and we went over it for revision. Despite feeling quite rusty, it was refreshing to get stuck back into my histories and refresh my memory on specific areas to ask when a patient has had a fall. The feedback I received from my supervisor was good in terms of communication, with just a few pointers for how I can improve in terms of content!

Last week we also had a small group session to help develop our communication skills. We were in small groups of 4, and had to take a history from a patient while assessed by a facilitator. All of this sounds relatively straightforward, but the patients, played by professional actors, had complicated histories and had been briefed to not make our jobs easy. For example, a patient may be reluctant to give us information or act very nervous. This was an interesting challenge for us. So far, a lot of our history taking practice has been done on fellow students. Whilst this has been a great way to build our confidence, peers can often be a little too helpful in prompting questions and examinations. In reality patients will present with a wide range of personalities, beliefs, preconceptions and will more often than not have no idea what the cause of their symptoms may be or what information is relevant. It was exciting to try and use our communication skills to ease information out of the patients using non-verbal techniques such as leaving silences if you feel the patient has more information to give. It also helped us practice our listening skills, including looking for small verbal cues (i.e. inflections in voice and tone). This was some great revision of first year skills, but also a nice step up in complexity in terms of challenge.

For a bit of a change in pace I decided to attend WMS Yoga Society that one of friends helped set up. I enjoy yoga and decided I needed some down-time during the week so it was great to go along. It was nice to see lots of other medics from various year groups get together and do something which wasn’t medicine related, even for just an hour. All in all, it was a nice relax and a well-deserved reset after a busy couple of weeks and prepared me for week 8 of Advanced Cases 1. Bring on a week of Genetics!

Jordan

Charlie Gallan : 01 Nov 2018 11:01 |  Tags: Jordan Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Teaching, training and decision–making: The Autumn term so far

As I go into week 6 of Advanced Cases 1, I can’t quite believe I’m nearly halfway through this block! Recently, we’ve been learning about vulnerable patients and viruses. We’ve explored topics such as what factors can make someone vulnerable (age, pre-existing conditions etc), and common viral conditions that we will likely see frequently as we move into more clinical teaching, such as norovirus and HIV.

Last Thursday I had a communication skills session on decision making, which introduced us to some different ways of using various types of reasoning to reach a diagnosis. The session was completely interactive, and we were given a patient presentation line by line and had to come up with and change our differentials as new information was given to us. The patient was introduced as mid 70s at first, leading us to think of the chronic conditions of older age, but then halfway through the patient age was changed to mid-teens. This meant we had to change all our differentials from chronic to acute illnesses, which helped us think about what factors actually alter our most likely diagnosis.

This term I have also taken on the role of student seminar teacher, running weekly sessions for first years along with two other second years. We delivered our first session this week, and it was interesting for us to re-visit topics from last year, with all the associated memories of struggling to understand the concept of peritoneum. One thing we’re keen to impress on our group of first year students is that although the course can seem overwhelming at first, things will start to fall into place and make sense as they move through the blocks.

Our three areas of focus for this week’s session were gastrointestinal anatomy, endocrinology and embryology. The first years really seemed to find the session helpful, which was a great feeling. I delivered the GI anatomy part, and tried to make it as interactive as possible by using cling film to explain peritoneum. It was slightly daunting to teach at first, but nice to try and break down some of these topics to make them slightly easier to digest (no pun intended).

This week I also had my introduction to theatres, during which I spent a morning in theatre with an orthopaedic surgeon. The introduction was just that; a session for us to familiarise ourselves with the general environment and the roles of the various people in the surgical team. The surgeries I saw were foot and ankle orthopaedics. I’ve spent time in internal surgery (heart, lungs, liver) previously, but never in orthopaedics, so it was interesting to see the difference – mostly the use of power tools! The whole experience left me with a taste to spend more time in theatres next term and hopefully become more familiar and comfortable in this environment.

This weekend I am attending a course to train to deliver Basic Life Support (BLS) training. I am really excited about getting involved in peer teaching generally and the training to deliver BLS is something I’ve wanted to do for a while. It’s going to be a busy weekend, but good for my personal and professional development.

Jordan

Charlie Gallan : 16 Oct 2018 14:04 |  Tags: Jordan Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

My name is Jordan and I am a Phase 2 student at WMS!

Term started a couple of weeks ago and I’m still settling back in. After a long summer of doing (not) a lot, getting back into the swing of having teaching every day has been tough, but so far the excitement of getting stuck into more clinical placements this block has kept me going. I’ve just started the Advanced Cases 1 block, which runs for 12 weeks (until Christmas), with weeks themed around some of the most common conditions we will see as doctors. We have hospital on Mondays and lectures and cased based learning (CBL) Tuesday-Friday.

Our teaching the past few weeks has revolved around some of the most common medical conditions we will encounter when qualified doctors, and includes some recap of concepts we have worked on previously. For example, in this block so far we have covered heart failure, chronic conditions, frailty and confusion. With an aging population, these are the cases that will take up most of our time as junior and then more senior doctors . UTIs, dementia and delirium, hypertension and heart failure are some of the most common chronic conditions we will deal with, so this block provides a great preparation for this and means that we are brushed up on these common conditions before we commence full time clinical placements from January.

We have hospital teaching every Monday, where we are placed at one hospital for the duration of the block. My placement is at George Eliot hospital, and my experience so far has been great. I’ve had bedside teaching (where a senior doctor takes you to a patient and then you take the history and do an examination while they watch), which is great to develop your clinical skills and get feedback on how you can improve. I’ve also had self-directed ward learning, which is where you are assigned to a ward and you go and take part in whatever teaching you feel would be useful. So far I’ve shadowed a ward round on a gastroenterology ward, which was a great, albeit daunting, learning experience (the consultant asked us medical students to review the stool and hydration charts and report back, which seemed like a big responsibility!). When we’ve had our teaching on taking bloods, we can also offer to get involved with practising these in our self-directed learning periods, which as I have my venepuncture and blood cultures teaching next Monday, will be me soon!

I’ve studied at WMS for one year now. Before coming to medical school, I worked for two years, firstly as a graduate intern at Birmingham Children’s Hospital and for then as a dispenser in hospital pharmacy. Before that, I studied History at Birmingham University, so my path to medicine has not been the most conventional. However, I think having a different set of experiences from my peers sets me apart and gives me a different perspective on some issues. For example I have more experience of constructing arguments and arguing ethical and theoretical principles, which really helps with the VLE (Values, Law and Ethics) teaching, where there is quite often no simple answer and excellence is more to do with how you apply principles. The lesson to take away is that you don’t need to have done the conventional biomed degree to succeed as a medical student! All experience can be relevant and useful.

For me, Warwick was the natural choice. I applied to other unis, but it was really the open day that sold Warwick to me. I think its unique in being all-graduate, so you don’t have to be merged with undergraduates halfway through the course. Having worked for a few years after graduating my first degree, I am currently 25, so I’m not fresh out of undergrad. In that way, I think I wanted an environment where everyone is more career focussed and driven to be the best they can be. Warwick has a mature atmosphere that I picked up on as soon as I arrived. There is also a strong tradition of peer teaching, where you are taught all the tricks to remember the content by older students. I’m involved in organising the peer teaching for the new intake of students, so more of this will feature in future posts.

Until next time!

Jordan

Charlie Gallan : 03 Oct 2018 08:32 |  Tags: Jordan Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem