All 127 entries tagged Student

A Revue to Remember

This week has been busy and I feel like I have barely had time to breathe, but it’s been one of the best weeks of Med School yet! This week we had the infamous Warwick Revue. I had been excited about being involved in this since I got my offer and it lived up to every expectation I had and more. The Revue is a chance for the whole Med School to get together and have a break for an evening and allow us theatre types to have some fun.

Although it’s been stressful balancing my degree work with rehearsals, I have enjoyed every second of Revue. It’s nice to talk to people outside of year 1 so I’ve been getting tips on how to survive the first year. The sketches and songs are written by the committee and featured hits such as “Greatest School” aka, “Greatest Showman” and a take on “Love Island” featuring a familiar face of WMS. Finally, what revue would be complete without some High School Musical shoved in there?

The show went amazingly well and a brave third year decided to have a chest wax for charity. Just hearing the howls of pain from the side of stage brought tears to my eyes but it’s all for a good cause, right? We also had a table that wanted a larger role in the performance than just the role of “table”, so it would collapse randomly during the times I was on stage. However, it provided a good laugh and made the scenes that much funnier.

The final song was amazing, and we ended the show with a bang… literally, as someone had brought a confetti cannon! We were supported by talented band members (also med students) and some hard-working tech guys (also med students again). The Revue would not have been anywhere near as good without them. I cannot wait for next year when we get to do it all over again, and I hope to write something for next year as well.

This week also saw the end of Block 1 and the commencement of Block 2. I had been looking forward to this as I wanted to learn some new anatomy and move on from looking at the abdomen. Again, Jamie Roebuck brought his A game with his physiology lectures. On the first day, we were treated to a drinking race using straws to demonstrate flow rate, and the presence of chocolate on day two to demonstrate ventilation and perfusion went down especially well.

I’m playing around with how I take lecture notes after being in the lecture as I am finding that trying to revise pages and pages of notes is draining and not productive at all. So, I have now decided to make all my notes onto one A4 page and see if that works better. I also took my Block 1 formative this week as we must do at the end of every block. It is split into two sections, a multiple-choice section and a short answer section. I failed the first take of the MCQ, but I am not too worried as I decided to do it before I reviewed my Block 1 notes, and I would have done slightly better. I was also only 2% off passing and I did manage to pass on my second take. The formatives do not count towards our final grade and are more a method for the Med School and us to monitor our progress and find out where our weaknesses are.

I have also had another job to do this week as I have been running the Warwick Medical School Instagram account! I was worried about what to talk about but it’s been a lot of fun and I have enjoyed running it so I hope it has been useful for future Warwick Medical School students! The next couple of weeks are apparently intense with the content we learn but I am looking forward to it all. We also have “Medic Take Me Out” this month which is going to be brilliant and something I really am looking forward to! I can’t wait for Christmas songs to start playing as we get near to Christmas …. And our mock OSCEs.

Abbie

Charlie Gallan : 14 Nov 2018 12:46 |  Tags: Abbie 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

An introduction to plastinated specimens, peer support and the WMS Revue

Four weeks have gone by since I started at WMS and despite feeling exhausted, I am still enjoying lectures and CBL cases. Today on the way to lectures we were interrupted by a flock of geese crossing the road. I had tried to keep walking to the WMS teaching building but was quickly reminded that you do not mess with geese. I guess that’s one of the delights of going to Warwick!

We have had a couple of sessions with the plastinated specimens and I have found them to be such a valuable learning resource. I was originally looking for a medical degree with dissection, but the plastinated specimensare better for education than I could have ever hoped for with a dissection. They are incredibly detailed and truly give you an idea of the positioning of organs within the abdomen (the block we are going through currently) which does answer a lot of questions and helps to visualise the relations of each organ. For example, the relation of the diaphragm to the stomach, kidneys and liver was explained by viewing the specimens better than every single time I had loaded up my fancy anatomy app. Being the neuro geek that I am, I could not resist having a look at the neural structures on a couple of the specimens after identifying the abdominal structures. The detail of the nerves protruding from the spinal cord was incredible and I wish I had longer to look at each specimen than we’re able to. It’s apparent that although anatomy lectures are taking the longest to go through and understand, I am really enjoying the topic and I am really looking forward to Block Three … Brains. I am incredibly grateful to the people who left their body to medical education so that we may have this opportunity to view anatomy in the way we do and I thank them for their generosity.

We have also started Peer Support sessions and I have a group on a Monday evening with two second years leading the session. We submit topics we want to cover, and they make materials and we spend two hours going over things. This week we did surface anatomy as it’s something I am struggling to remember (Is it L4, T1, L2? These are questions I ask myself daily). A couple of our peers volunteered to be wrapped in clingfilm (as the models do on Fridays) and we drew on them with markers. It is a great way to visualise the planes and where the organs lie in context. You can’t really teach yourself anatomy just with a textbook. I was also able to palpate my course mate, with is something I am still working on during Friday sessions. It takes a bit of confidence to palpate a stranger’s abdomen to feel for landmarks such as the pelvis and ribcage, but I am slowly becoming more comfortable with it and I know this will be a key skill as a doctor.

We have also started the revue preparations as auditions are held this week. The revue is half the reason I chose Warwick out of the options I had as I love performing and it is a good break from medicine. The revue is an evening of entertainment where we poke fun at WMS and have short sketches, songs and dances all to raise money for charity (Street Doctors this year) whilst having a good laugh away from medicine. I auditioned this evening choosing to act and sing as I vowed to never dance again after giving it up during secondary school. As a dance teacher’s daughter, I have two brilliant left feet. We find out at the weekend which parts we have got, and I can’t wait to get started.

I feel completely settled here now. I can’t wait to start community placements next week and start having contact with patients. We get to explore their condition outside of hospital settings which is vital as this is where our patients spend most of their lives, despite us seeing them mostly in a hospital bed, so it’s a good idea to develop an understanding of care in the community. The block one formative is two weeks away and though I am slightly nervous, but I know that in the long run these just give an indicator as to how much we know. We also have a WMS Surgical Society anatomy day coming up which I know will be a massive help with getting the facts into long term memory.

So med school is tiring, but I’m enjoying every day and the hardest part is the walk up Tocil lane in the morning!

Abbie

Charlie Gallan : 22 Oct 2018 14:27 |  Tags: Abbie 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

Abbie's diary of the introduction to MBChB

Monday 24^thSeptember was a huge day for me and the rest of my cohort as it was the beginning of our Warwick Medical School education. The day before, we had a meet and greet in a pub just off campus which consisted of meeting familiar faces and getting to know new people in my cohort. We also received our Med Soc society cards and t-shirts and had the opportunity to chat to the year above us to get some last-minute tips and tricks to survive the first year.

Monday morning soon arrived, and we had several lectures welcoming us to the med school and who’s who in the world of WMS. We also met with our personal tutor and our tutor groups for the first time. Cased Based Learning (CBL) was something I had been nervous about as I had not had good experiences with group work in the past, but my group bonded quickly, and I left the session wanting to experience CBL sessions as soon as possible.

Monday evening brought a bar crawl with our fetching Med Soc t-shirts but despite five of us trying to navigate Google Maps, we still had a situation of about 15 medics wandering around town completely lost (at least we only have to navigate one building in our future careers). Eventually, we found the place and quickly got down to the business of the evening: “having a nice quiet one with the flatmates”. Needless to say, there were a few sore heads in lecture the next morning, but everyone seemed to have survived.

Tuesday brought the slow introduction of content into our lectures, including basic cellular biology, and we got to experience a CBL session looking at how we work our way through CBL cases.

Warwick has a lot of support schemes in place for students, from personal tutors to block leads and systems run by the Med Soc. One of these systems is the Medic Parents scheme. I met my parents that evening, who are two second years. I was happy to see that one of my brothers is a guy from my CBL group and it was nice talking to my medic dad about anatomy - something I am looking forward to learning this year.

Wednesday allowed us to have some free time in the afternoon, meaning we could participate in main campus events if we wanted to. We also had our Freshers Fair and I joined too many societies. I particularly enjoyed the surgical station as I performed my first suture, which I am rather proud of! One of the societies I had made a beeline towards was the Neuro Soc as coming from a Neuroscience background, I was keen to keep a bit of neuro in my life outside of block teaching. I also joined Warwick Netball as I have decided that I need to physically escape my desk!

On Thursday we were introduced to mindfulness and how to make sure we keep ourselves emotionally healthy during the course. We also had the second of our CBL sessions and I particularly enjoyed this as we had brought in brownies to eat. In the evening we had a “where’s wally” social - seeing 50 or so medics running around dressed up in red and white costumes is the most bizarre sight you have seen!

Friday brought our first day at the hospital, which proved to be one of the best days of the entire week. In the afternoon we had one of the best lectures I think I have ever had. We covered clinical skills and watching the demos given by Dr Gill and Prof Patel was like watching a medical Ant and Dec with Dr Gill’s enthusiasm and Prof Patel’s quick-witted “dad humour”.

We were exhausted after a long but incredible first week, however we still had the Med Ball. It took five medics one hour and four videos to figure out how to fix a bow tie in our halls, but eventually we made it. The food was amazing and one of our lecturers wore some particularly amazing shoes that stole the show from every other outfit there. Again, we had a few sore heads the next morning, but it had been a great evening to relax and celebrate the fact we were here.

After talking to people, we still have “out of body moments” where we keep questioning if this is really happening. I’m sure this "daydream" state won’t last long but the medical school here act like a giant team. Upper years support the years below them and the lecturers are only an email away. I’m looking forward to working through block 1 and hopefully getting some sleep along the way.

Update: Freshers Flu has hit me hard.

Abbie

Charlie Gallan : 10 Oct 2018 10:18 |  Tags: Abbie Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem