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December 21, 2018
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas…
Christmas has finally arrived! I’m currently heading home writing this blog and I am very much looking forward to just sleeping. We have had a busy couple of weeks, so it’s been a final push towards the end of the term.
I had my final 2018 student seminar session where we played “Pin the ECG on Santa” and all wore matching Christmas jumpers which amazingly had not been co-ordinated. One of the people teaching me is my medic dad so I can guess you call it family intuition! They have both been amazing this term along with the ECG session the cardiac society put on for us, the physiology and anatomy days and the MOSCE prep day which have also been lifesavers. There is so much support here, no one wants anyone to fall behind, which builds a sense of camaraderie in the med school. We also had a Christmas-themed CBL where we exchanged secret Santa presents! I received a bumblebee notebook, someone knows me so well!
We had our final anatomy session of 2018 in the surgical training centre, which was incredible. We were privileged enough to experience fresh tissue which had been donated for medical teaching use. It was something I will never forget. We were able to hold hearts, kidneys and livers and identify structures that we had learnt over the two blocks. All the time I kept thinking about how these were once keeping someone alive and had done so for 80ish years (I don’t know details about the donors, so this is just an estimate). We were also shown a working chest with the lungs inflating. I got to feel the lungs expand and feel every alveolus open which felt like small bubbles under my fingers. It was an amazing opportunity. I got to inflate the lungs and I was surprised as to how much I needed to inflate the bag to get the lungs to initially expand. In all honesty, this really should not have been a surprise as we had learnt about the force needed to open the lungs in a lecture… so I guess I need to go back over that one!
In the evening my amazing flatmates had thrown a surprise birthday party to top off an incredible day for someone who wants to pursue surgery as a career. We had lots of food, and a game which got brutal between some of the more competitive ones. I felt really touched as it’s been a tough couple of weeks with block 2, as physiology is just something I’ve not got on well with, so to have this to end the term really brought my spirits up.
We only had one more thing to do. MOSCES. These were mocks of our OSCE exams in the summer which meant that for 12 solid hours in our kitchen we practised all our examinations. I now know my friends’ hands back to front and can finally pronounce “Leukonychia” and “Koilonychia” which I suppose is good considering I will be using these terms for the rest of my life. It was very odd for my non-medic flatmates to walk into the kitchen to see us tapping each other’s stomachs. Perks of living with medics I suppose….
I had my MOSCE on Tuesday and was nervous, especially as I was in the same corridor as I was for my interview back in January. I don’t know my result yet. I did run out of time on a station which I had practised repeatedly in our kitchen and was way undertime. This was frustrating as I know I would have dropped marks there but it’s a good indication for next year. I also keep second guessing myself over what I said and what I didn’t say, and I know I missed a few things out when it came to another one of the stations. However, if I did fail (and that’s perfectly fine) I get 1:1 with our head of Clinical Skills so its all win I guess!
I am going to try and have a break over Christmas, I have a list of things to do and some final lectures to note from block, 2 but I want to make sure I have a couple of days where I don’t think about medicine. If I have learnt anything this block, it’s that it’s important to forget about medicine for 24 hours.
I am really looking forward to the next block: Brains! This is where my undergraduate degree will hopefully help. I love everything to do with the neuro side of things, so I am hoping that I will get to grips a bit more easily with this block. I also want to be able to help others who might struggle with it as so many people have helped me this year… but only time will tell! Merry Christmas guys!
Hope you all have a brilliant Christmas and an amazing New Year !
Abbie
Charlie Gallan
21 Dec 2018 12:10
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December 18, 2018
Time off & teaching
After the end of transition week, November ended, and so did our term. We now have a good month off, from the end of November to the 2nd of January. I have to say, the break is very much needed! This term, we have done a 12 week stretch with no breaks at all and combined with the very full weeks that we have, means that most people are tired out! Medical school can be very busy and challenging, so you soon learn that taking proper time off to recharge is vital to your own wellbeing. I certainly needed a break!
Although term has ended, this doesn’t mean I will be doing nothing. For the previous two Mondays I have also been continuing my BLS teaching. Basic Life Support (BLS) teaches students the skills to possibly be able to save a life if they come across a seriously ill casualty in the community. Getting involved in teaching these skills is something I have been passionate about pursuing for a couple of years, so this year I decided to train to become a BLS instructor.
The overall idea is that senior medical students teach BLS to first year medical students, giving them the skills to assess a seriously ill casualty and intervene to perhaps save a life. This Monday was the last session before the exam and started with practice for the students before their assessment. I was nervous for them, having gotten to know my group over a number of teaching sessions, but am pleased to report that their skills were all very good. The ability to assess a seriously ill casualty and provide chest compressions and other interventions are key skills that all medical students must master, and as a teacher, it is very rewarding to see their skills improve over the length of the course.
On Tuesday I also taught my Student Seminar group at the Medical School. The other two teachers for my group were away this week, so it was just me teaching our group of first years, which was quite daunting! Usually we all support each other whilst teaching, so teaching alone was quite daunting. I taught a session on ECG interpretation, which is a key skill for the first-year students to learn at this stage of their training (at least to a basic level). I covered heart anatomy and physiology, before proceeding to the more clinical aspects, including interpreting an ECG. As well as hopefully being useful for the first years, teaching ECG also served as revision for me, which I’m sure will be useful as my first full-time clinical placement in the New Year is in cardiology and ECGs are like the bread and butter for this speciality.
Have a lovely Christmas!
Jordan
Charlie Gallan
18 Dec 2018 12:20
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December 04, 2018
Our First Patient
These past two weeks have brought the first time we have had contact with patients. I had been looking forward to this for a while as it is nice to put into context the hundreds of hours of studying and lectures.
Understandably we were nervous - it was the first time talking to someone as a medical student and being in the patient’s home made it even more nerve-wracking. However, the experience was incredible in the end. I can’t say too much to protect patient identity, but our patient was lovely and made us all coffee and biscuits before we had even sat down! They were fiercely independent and had recovered quickly from what was a major operation. Our case had links to our teaching at the medical school, so it was nice to have reassurance that what we are learning now does have clinical application. The long hours can make it seem less so! It was interesting to talk to the patient and find out what was important to them with regards to their health. For this person it was being able to do their gardening. It provided food for thought about tailoring care to enable the patient to live as normal a life as possible and this includes allowing them to participate in activities that they find enjoyable.
We also had the opportunity to chat to healthcare professionals, including a strong-minded nurse who fought for their patients. We get told to always listen to the nurses as they see the patients more than us so have a better understanding of their needs than we do! This particular nurse was not afraid to argue with consultants about what was best for their patients. I can only hope to work with nurses like this when I graduate. We were also told about the funding nature of the NHS. The staff had to hold regular fundraising days to obtain the exercise equipment they needed for the patients’ recovery. It was clearly frustrating that the NHS did not provide this funding but due to the selflessness of the staff, they were able to fund the gym to enable patients to get the most out of their recovery as possible.
It was a long day but we were all grateful to have had the chance to see patients. It was a welcome change to the timetable and we took a lot from the day. It’s easy to be blinded by science teaching and trying to get your head around everything, but it’s good to have a reminder that there are more important things that matter to the patient that the science behind their condition.
We also had Warwick Take Me Out recently, which was a brilliant end to the week. It was the same set up as the TV show except the girls had balloons instead of lights (also the reason I decided to sit as far away from the things (balloons not girls) as humanly possible). We had five guys from the med school (and a couple of non-medics) come and try and get a date. I am pleased to say no one went home without a date and the dates included vouchers for Nandos and Waggas … something the whole of the lecture theatre was envious of and had considered putting themselves forward for just for the prospect of free food. The evening was run by Warwick Marrow and all money raised went to the charity, which will contribute to the £47 it takes to sign up one person to the register.
We are all looking forward to Christmas now. The whole year is pretty tired and ready to break for the holidays. Personally, I am looking forward to sleeping. A lot. I am also excited for the Warwick Medical School interviews for the 2019 cohort. I remember being at mine in January of this year chatting to the current students, so it will be nice to see the process from the other side! If there are any prospective students reading this, good luck! Treat it like a normal conversation - it will be over before you know it and you’ll move on to checking consistently for the decision email! (Just don’t check every five minutes like I did …. You’ll go mad).
Abbie
Charlie Gallan
04 Dec 2018 08:33
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November 29, 2018
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
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November 23, 2018
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
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