All 29 entries tagged Patients

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

Off to GOSH I go

I’ve decided to make this blog not about transition week, but about the GOSH conference I was lucky to attend. I arrived into Euston at 7:30am from the 4:45am wakeup call and hopped over the road to the Welcome Collection. I have never been more grateful to have the conference so near to the station! I arrived and basically jumped straight into helping. I was invited down to help with the conference, but it was not until I had arrived that I realised exactly what I was doing. They were letting me loose with the official GOSH PGME twitter account. I was a bit in shock, me? I got down to helping lay out the lanyards and said hi to the faces I knew from the team and was re-united with faces who I saw at the Summer School in July.

The day began with some speeches from an ex-patient at GOSH who talked about her condition and how she lives her life outside of just medical treatments. It was such an inspiration to be able to sit and listen to her and she explained how best to support children with the transition from child to adult services. We then had a speech looking at physician health and how we can prevent burn out. The quote that stuck with me here was “we can’t prevent burn out, but we can support it and prevent it getting worse”.I have to fully agree with this quote. We can try our best to keep heads above the water but we will get tired of treading water and will sink. However, it’s about not making the situation worse that it falls into depression. It was such a powerful speech that I nearly missed the beginning of the next one. Professor Dame Jane Darce talked about cracking the glass ceiling in medicine. She began by asking the crowd if we thought we had cracked the glass ceiling. Considering about 50-60% of the people in the room were women, only two people put their hands up. She then asked about if we had made a chip. Nobody put their hands up. Dame Darce then went on to talk about some of the micro-aggressions she had faced throughout her career and I was shocked that attitudes still existed in today’s NHS. She went on to talk about how we need to fix this culture through male allies and by strong role models. She ended by quotingMadeleine Albright — 'There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women'.

We then had a quick coffee break with the BEST cookies in the world (yes, I know I should be talking about the conference but conference food is amazing). I was given freedom to move about the conference as I pleased so I went to a talk titled how to Harness the power of your learning environment. I considered since I was now in a different learning environment, this would be helpful. She talked about her LOAF and BREAD model and how this incorporates into the main theatre list briefing.At the end everyone in thetheatre introduces themselves, role and what they want to achieve from the day.This allows everyone to be reminded about names, roles and more importantly, competency levels. I could see how this would be incredible for us students as it can be a bit intimidating to ask to cover one area so to be invited to speak up, would be so useful. We then had a presentation by Mr Ross Fisher who talked about how not to do presentations. It was easily one of the best talks I have sat in all year. He talked about the statistics behind long conference talks and uptake of information (1.5% of every 200 facts). He talked about how we need to re-look at our education as PowerPoints serve less of a purpose than they once did. With food for thought, it was lunch time and an opportunity for me to look at the posters presented. I hope to present one day here myself but for now, I’m happy just to look at the posters. I also got to have a go on some simulation software in the form of a computerised dummy which can cry, has a palpable pulse, shows capillary refill time and has a head that turns to sound as well as other features. It was incredible as I’ve never seen something like that before even though it was slightly terrifying to watch.

In the afternoon we had further talks on ethics in caring for the child in hospital, the ins and outs on how they managed to anaesthetise the two conjoined twins over the past year (venous system, arterial system and finally the craniums) and how the GOSH school runs alongside medical treatments. A powerful quote came from the GOSH school speech which was “how can you expect me to become a doctor if I can’t get off the ward into school”. It hit home about not just treating the child but their entire life outside of their condition. We could be treating the next prime minister, the next break through scientists but if we don’t allow them the opportunity to have the chances medically fit children do, they will struggle to achieve their potentials.

I could go on about the GOSH conference for a few more pages but I am aware of the word limit we have on these blogs! The day finished with a final lecture about the DRIVE team at GOSH who are developing new technology for use in healthcare and then a performance from the London International Gospel Choir. They were incredible and such an amazing end to a brilliant day. I am so grateful for the opportunity to help out and I know one day, I will end up at GOSH because they are the type of people I know I want to work with in the future.

Eden Villiers : 26 Nov 2019 08:42 |  Tags: Abbie Mbchb Patients Student Wards Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Can I step outside for a minute?

We have been chugging along nicely with AC1 counting down the weeks until transition period. I am feeling slightly less nervous about it, but I am still a bit apprehensive about what is to come. However, we have had our last double weekly CBL sessions and have had our first “big” once weekly session, of which we will have in CCE1. I really did enjoy this, it was faced paced and it felt like we got a lot done in such a small amount of time. I got to indulge myself using my new whiteboard markers as I was scribe for this session. The board looked like a unicorn had given their fair share of input by the end.

We have also come to the end of my CLO sessions. My last session was with the vascular access team at UH where I was to watch a PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter – totally didn’t have to google that) line inserted into the arm of a patient who was unfortunately having to undergo chemotherapy. lt was such an interesting morning as I got to see several medical devices used. First was the ultrasound machine. This was used to see if the veins in the arms were viable for use of the catheter. Veins collapse under pressure from the probe whereas arteries do not, I was standing in the corner of the room watching this machine with awe trying (and failing again) to go over my anatomy of the vessels in the arm. I also got to see a very basic ECG machine used as this helps the vascular access team determine if the line is correctly placed in the heart. The ideal spot for the line is just above the right atrium where the pacemaker cells for the heart are also located. This means when the metal wire enters this area, we would see a change in the ECG in the form of a heightened P Wave (this is the wave the heart produces when the top (atriums) of it contracts). I was eagerly watching the screen of the ECG machine, but I suddenly began to feel very hot, and suddenly very ill. I tried to see if it would pass but after 30 seconds there was a very real possibility, I was going to be ill over the patient which isn’t really what you want to be doing so, I asked to step out. I was really annoyed because I had been in so many surgeries before, seen lots of blood, bones, gore and brains and loved every second. Yet, a simple PICC line with some bleeding made me take a turn. I was confused as I had eaten that day, had my morning coffee, yet this still happened. I went to sit in the break room where I bumped into Sam who is an ex ODP in my year and he was chatting to me and just cheering me up in general. It was the frustration more than anything that was bringing me down.

It is perfectly normal to feel a bit funny at any point of any procedure and I know the staff at the hospital would rather that we took ourselves away rather than, well, throwing up on the patient. Apparently, it creates some sort of infection risk, who knew? However, I can’t wait to get into surgery, I want to scrub in, and I want to be able to help in ops but I guess I just have to accept that I had one funny turn.

We have also now been allocated our transition week and thus our CCE departments. Turns out I won’t have to wait that much longer to get into surgery as I am in the anaesthetics department!! I have a consultant whose name reads as “Dr Ready” which I believe is the best name you could have as a doctor (apart from Watson or Who). This has slightly made me happier about transition weeks but since I am in a department and not a Ward, I am worried about how I settle in to my new “lecture theatre”. I can’t wait to start feeling more like a doctor though, more like I can be useful on the wards. I keep reminding myself I already know some consultants (Dr Burbridge I can imagine will be getting a couple of visits off me) and I do know some Warwick Grads who are now F1’s. I imagine my next blog will be reflecting on how transition weeks have gone. I guess the biggest downside is having to catch the 50-minute bus from campus every day, it’s bad enough having to get it once a week! Thankfully I now have a driving test booked for January so hopefully, I'll be less of a bus hobbit come the new year. Onwards and upwards !

Eden Villiers : 15 Nov 2019 10:31 |  Tags: Abbie Mbchb Patients Student Wards Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem