All 17 entries tagged Wards

Back to Teaching!

People who have read my blog before will know that peer teaching is something I am very passionate about and something I am keen to do at every opportunity. So far, I have found the SSC2 project period to be much lighter in terms of timetable so I’ve had much more free time to get involved with teaching again. This week I have returned to teaching Student Seminars and I have also resumed Basic Life Support teaching.

Student Seminars are hugely important to the Warwick experience and are something that makes WMS very special indeed. Student Seminars are where second- and third-year medical students teach first year students on topics which the first years have found difficult from that week’s teaching. The topics are picked by the first years and then the second- or third-year teachers prepare sessions which break down the topic into manageable chunks and talk through especially important or challenging parts of the topic. When I was in first year, I went to seminars every week, and while I was in second year I taught seminars every week. Now that I’m in third year, I am keen to continue and do some teaching for the current second year students. This week I taught on the pharmacology of anti-arrhythmia drugs which is not an easy topic but not too challenging, especially as I spent a year working in pharmacy before starting medicine.

This Monday I also restarted teaching Basic Life Support (BLS). Last year, about 10 Warwick students got the chance to become trained BLS instructors. BLS is the cornerstone of First Aid in that it trains you to approach a causality, assess their airway and consciousness and then give chest compressions and rescue breaths to potentially save their life. As I’m sure you can imagine, BLS is a critical skill for medical students to gain as it provides such a basis for so many other skills and gives them the confidence to potentially save someone’s life if necessary. At Birmingham Medical School, these essential BLS skills are taught by senior medical students and this model has been commended nationally as an example of excellent practice. Thus, Warwick Medical School decided to implement a similar programme, which gives Medical students the essential BLS skills and also gives the teachers an incredible opportunity to gain teaching skills. As I may have mentioned above, I’m sort of keen on teaching……so I thought I’d love to get involved! Last year I qualified as a BLS instructor, able to teach the course and then this year we decided to run courses to train the new first year medical students. Just in case you’ve never done BLS before, here are the main steps [Split into the handy mnemonic DR ABC]:

D – Danger: check for danger in the surrounding environment. Approach if safe to do so.

R – Response: ask the casualty if they are okay and if their eyes are closed as them to open them. Are they alert or unresponsive?

[Call for help at this point]

A – Airway. Do head tilt chin lift to OPEN the airway.

B – Breathing - LOOK, LISTEN and FEEL for breathing. If not breathing call an ambulance and start chest compressions and rescue breaths.

C – Circulation – are there any signs of bleeding? Treat bleeding if present.

I would highly recommend that if you’ve never done BLS before for you to attend a course if you can. BLS, performed successfully and early on can save a life, and it doesn’t matter whether you are in a medical career or not. Courses are available as part of your workplace if you become a workplace first aider, if you decide to become a first aid volunteer or through various other sources. Get trained if you can!

Eden Villiers : 18 Oct 2019 13:45 |  Tags: Jordan Mbchb Patients Student Wards Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Elective bliss…

Over 4 months ago I had just finished my final specialist clinical placement and was embarking on the epic task of finals revision. The first week of my Christmas holiday was spent trapped in my study, I was allowed out only for tea and bathroom breaks! This was a bit of miserable start to my holidays but it meant that I could take a whole week off over Christmas and enjoy spending time with my family. Our first exam was in the middle of February so before that we had 6 weeks of our revision block, Advanced clinical cases. All the local hospitals organised revision seminars for us, we had practice OSCE days (clinical skills like cannulation and wound care) and you could go on the wards to practice your history and examinations. Going into hospital was a welcome break from my study, and when exams were finally over in the first week of March I could finally breathe a sigh of relief!

It’s a strange feeling when you finish exams, you feel great, but almost immediately the worry about results sets in. Despite the horror that was the last few months of revision and how hard the last 4 years have been, it was all worth it as I passed! On the day of results, I had a quick celebratory cup of coffee with my friends and then instead of heading to the pub I had to sort myself out for my elective as I was flying 2 days later! I hadn’t wanted to jinx my results and think too much about elective so this meant that I had a lot to do! So less than 48 hours after getting my results I was on a plane to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, for 6 whole weeks!

I enjoyed my elective so much, it was been a totally unique experience and one I certainly won’t forget. I’m interested in psychiatry and academic medicine so for my elective I had organised a small research project focusing on the mental health of mothers and the long term consequences for their children. I also spent some time in the local psychiatry clinics and made the most of my spare time and explore Ethiopia! I really enjoyed working on my project, it was totally different to any research I’ve ever done before and certainly made me think about how much of an impact mental illness can have on an entire family, not just on an individual. I’m still in the process of writing it up for publication, so fingers crossed! Gaining clinical experience in Ethiopia was very eye opening, there are only 70 psychiatrists in the entire country and culturally mental illness isn’t well understood, with most patients, even those with psychosis, been taken to religious sites seeking a cure for spirit possession or the “evil eye” before coming to the attention of a medical doctor.

I didn’t go all the way to Ethiopia to just sit on my laptop or in a dusty outpatient department so I made the most of my free time exploring Ethiopia. I stayed with a wonderful host family who cooked beautiful traditional Ethiopian food for me and I was invited to join them for their Easter celebrations, which involved the sacrifice of two very plump chickens to mark the end of fasting-this bit was tricky for me to enjoy as I’m vegetarian! I saw hippos in the Rift Valley lakes, fed monkeys from my hand, visited several UNESCO world heritage sites and enjoyed the most fabulous coffee in the whole world (Ethiopia is where coffee was originally grown and brewed!).

I arrived back from my elective yesterday yet it feels like I only just got my exam results. My elective supervisor kept introducing me to people as the newly qualified doctor, which felt very strange, but I suppose that’s what I am…almost. For the next two months I will be on my “Assistantship”, where I shadow the FY1 doctors closely and make sure I know what I’m doing before I am let loose on the wards in August! I haven’t taken any blood or inserted a cannula for about 6 months so wish me luck!

Joshua Galvin : 11 May 2018 10:08 |  Tags: Joanne Mbchb Student Wards Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Care of the Surgical Patient – and the Beginning of Year Four

When I first became a medical student, being a fourth-year student seemed such a distant place to be. Before getting there, we had lectures to sit through, ward rounds to attend, and – who can forget? – exams to pass. I used to look in awe at the fourth-years I knew and think, “Wow – they must know so much. I wonder how I’ll ever learn enough to make it into the fourth year.” Well, odd as it may seem, last week we started our fourth year – it’s a bit anti-climactic, however, as it’s really a continuation of what we’ve been doing in the third year. Nevertheless, it’s hard to believe that I’m in that position now. I certainly don’t feel as confident and knowledgeable as those fourth-years seemed to me, way back when. But maybe I just don’t realise how much I’ve actually learned in the intervening three years. I’ll have to wait and see how I do on finals!

Along with our fourth year of medical school, we have also just started our sixth Specialist Clinical Placement block – this one is the CSP block (Care of the Surgical Patient). I’m thrilled about it for a couple of reasons. First, my clinical partner and I are at the largest of our teaching hospitals. I am taking full advantage of the huge variety of cases and the opportunities for teaching that are sometimes present at smaller hospitals but are definitely routinely present at ours. There’s just so much going on here. Second, I’m teamed up with a vascular-surgery team for most of this block. In previous blocks, I’ve spent time in orthopaedic surgery, colorectal surgery, urological surgery, gynaelogical surgery and loads of other disciplines, but I’ve never actually spent time watching operations on blood vessels, so this is an area entirely new to me.

So far, it’s been really interesting. I thought a lot of vascular surgery was occupied with conducting bypass operations, but there’s so much more to it than that! A lot of the patients we’re treating are elderly people who have diabetes and/or a smoking history, as these are two of the many risk factors for peripheral vascular disease. The issues that the surgery team deal with are much more varied than I expected: there are lots of bypass operations, some toe/limb amputations, a lot of wound debridement (removing dead tissue from wounds that have not healed fully) and lots of other things that you probably wouldn’t discuss over the dinner table with your mother – unless she is a vascular surgeon. Let’s just say there’s more gangrene than I expected.

And of course, although we’ve had our fair share of shadowing operations (I even got to make a stitch the other day!), there’s much more to the CSP block than just time spent in theatre. We have post-take ward rounds, clinics and lots and lots of teaching around surgery-related topics. We’ve had anaesthetics sessions, suturing workshops, teaching on wound dressing and care, and many other topics. I wasn’t too keen on a career in surgery before coming into this block, but who knows? There’s still time to change my mind!

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Luke Pemberton : 31 Aug 2017 15:44 |  Tags: John Mbchb Patients Student Wards Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Starting on the Paediatrics Ward

We’ve just started our third specialist clinical rotation and it’s focused on Child Health. This is actually a really diverse block. The medical school in combination with our base hospital puts a lot of effort into making sure that our timetables show expose us to various different aspects of paediatrics, so I’ve been to allergy clinics, development clinics and a few others so far – and it’s only been two weeks. We’ve got a lot more of this coming up over the following month. I wasn’t quite sure what I was expecting, but the care and the patients’ needs seem much more varied than I realised. I guess that’s what medical education is for.

In addition to clinics, we are also expected to spend time on the paediatrics ward and on the special-care baby ward (known affectionately as SCBU), among other places. I’m really looking forward to SCBU and to seeing some of the neonatal presentations. We will get to learn how to perform baby checks and see lots of the presentations that affect babies who are born unwell. Although it’s not an always-pleasant thing to confront, it’s part of someone’s health journey. I know that they’re in the best hands possible when admitted in the SCBU and each patient’s best shot at a happy and healthy life comes from being looked after by the staff there. I cannot wait to see it in action.

Taking patient histories (a mainstay of clinical contact, and something we learn from the first week of the first year) can introduce a different challenge with paediatrics patients: I’m rarely talking to one patient, I’m talking to a patient plus a parent and sometimes two! Sometimes the child is non-verbal, sometimes a grandparent comes along, sometimes the parents don’t speak English as a first language, and so on. These are all real-life factors that can make clear communication a more vital and significant part of the history. Furthermore, it can be really intimidating for a child to have lots of adults paying looking at them and asking questions about their health. We really have to ensure that we make it as non-threatening an environment as possible for the best interests of the patient, and all of the doctors on this ward are experts in this and teach us well.

Additionally, there are lots of components to a paediatric history that don’t have so much relevance in adult histories. For instance, we gather information where possible from parents about the child’s pregnancy and delivery, immunisations, developmental milestones and other social factors such as family life, schooling and siblings. These all contribute to a complete health picture for the patient and help us understand their background better than we otherwise would. It’s really good that the med school give us this practice; we need to have it down to an art by the time finals roll round!

John

Luke Pemberton : 10 Apr 2017 14:36 |  Tags: John Mbchb Patients Student Wards Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Musculoskeletal Health Care…

Our cohort is a few weeks into the first of our eight Specialist Clinical Placements (SCPs) and 2017 is stretching out before us. Although it seems long, the time is actually going by quite quickly. I wouldn't say it's exactly fun, but I'm enjoying myself tremendously on this block and am learning a great deal.

My first rotation is the MSK block (musculoskeletal health), which is pretty self-explanatory. In this block, we become more familiar with problems of joints, muscles and bones (and nerves and connective tissue and some skin and so many other things as well...). Many people run a mile when they think of anatomy and memorising lists of muscles and bones, but block 4 in the first year (Locomotion) was actually my favourite block and I'm loving the MSK placement. We've seen so many things that I wasn't expecting and we're only just over three weeks in.

As is probably fairly obvious, a lot of the work revolves around bones and joints - so we see fractures and their treatment, joint replacements, and that sort of thing. But of course they don't exist in a bubble - for instance, fractures are often accompanied by soft-tissue injuries and we have to know all of the repairs that come along with them. Getting a new knee or a new hip is a major operation and can take weeks or months to recover from fully. A lot of the learning we've done in earlier years around the biological, psychological and social impact of health conditions has come in very handy in understanding the lives that our patients live and how injuries might change them. It's proven incredibly applicable now that we are seeing more patients in a clinical setting than we did in the first years of the course.

I was not expecting that we'd be taught rheumatology as much in this block as we have been. It's a very diverse field and there's so much going on! The more I see of it and the more I learn about the speciality, the more interested I become. The patients are very interesting and diverse, and being an effective rheumatologist requires extensive knowledge of many branches of medicine and the ability to pull them all together very quickly. Since rheumatological diseases can affect multiple body systems, specialists in this field need to be quite broad in their knowledge and approach. We have seen patients with rheumatoid arthritis (of course) but also psoriasis (and the multiple effects that it has), polymyalgia rheumatica, systemic lupus erythematosus and several other conditions that we've only seen in textbooks before now.

I'm enjoying the block so much, I'm really gutted that it is coming to an end so soon. But of course new adventures await in the next placement, too.

John

Luke Pemberton : 26 Jan 2017 14:46 |  Tags: John Mbchb Patients Student Wards Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem