All 191 entries tagged Warwick

I passed! Bring on Phase III…

I passed! I’m officially a third-year medical student! I found out my results last Monday and I am so over the moon to have passed my exams and have moved forwards into the next stage of my training. Third and Fourth year are grouped together into one “phase”, which the med school call “Phase III”. This is the final phase of the Warwick MBChB before we (hopefully) qualify as doctors. The way Phase III works is that we have an 8 week block called Student Selected Component 2 which is a research project, followed by 8 x 8 week blocks of “Specialist Clinical Placements” where we rotate around various specialities, including areas such as Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Orthopaedics etc. These are our final placements before we enter the real world, so to speak and go on to become qualified doctors. It feels surreal to say that I am entering the final part of the course when it only feels like yesterday I was packing up and getting ready to move to Warwick to start a new phase of my life.

The first part of Phase III is Student Selected Component 2 which is our chance to complete a research project and develop the research skills required of all doctors. This 8-week block is very self-directed but the first week was a week full of taught sessions relating to our chosen project. My project is interviewing funeral directors and producing a thematic analysis of their experiences of arranging for GPs to complete cremation paperwork. Thus, my sessions were around qualitative research, how to conduct interviews and producing a write up from this. As well as a chance to do research, the block is also a chance to recover slightly from the length of second year and engage in some extra-curricular activities such as teaching or attending conferences.

This week started more slowly with me emailing out the Funeral Directors I want to interview and finding books and articles for my literature review. It feels slightly odd to not be on placement after so long of going to hospital, but it is also a welcome feeling to enjoy being a normal student for a while, being mostly based on campus and at the library. It means that I can start going to the gym again and catching up with friends again. It’s a slower pace of life, but a welcome one.

Lucinda Sidbury : 03 Oct 2019 14:13 |  Tags: Chb Gem Graduate-Entry Jordan Mb Medicine Warwick |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Exams and a long–awaited holiday

That’s it – the exams are over! I had two written exams, one which was a Short Answer Question paper (SAQ) and one Multiple Choice Question paper (MCQ). Overall, I think they went okay, although it is very hard to be able to tell after the fact. For the SAQ, each question requires you to write an answer in prose or bullet points so it tests total recall. The SAQ paper is useful for testing concepts which are lists of things (i.e. list 4 differential diagnoses for central chest pain), or require written argument (i.e. values laws or ethics such as state ethical principles supporting X). The MCQ paper tests fact recall and reasoning abilities, and often out of 5 options, 2 or even 3 may be correct answers, but there is one answer which is most correct. The MCQ then requires you to reason and think about why something is the answer when something else isn’t.

The week after the writtens we had our second year OSCEs. The OSCEs are the “practical” aspect of our exams and test our clinical skills. However, in second year, the OSCEs are very different from first year. In first year the OSCEs focus around being able to do a specific examination or take one history in 10 minutes. In second year, the OSCEs test multiple skills in one station and are true to the clinical environment. So, one station may be 2 minutes taking a central chest pain history, then 3 minutes doing an examination of the heart, then 2 minutes interpreting an ECG. And in addition, each station is now only 7 minutes! This means that time is very tight and we have to be much smoother and slicker with our clinical skills. Overall, I think the OSCEs went okay, they are designed to test you and I was certainly exhausted by the end! I did my best to answer the questions as best I could, but I think the exam conditions make you miss things that you normally wouldn’t. I spent a lot of time in hospital and GP this year and I think this definitely helped, although I would say my performance wasn’t as good as I think it has been on a day to day basis on placement, which is slightly frustrating. I hope that the examiners understand that exam conditions can mean we don’t always perform as well as we are able to.

After my OSCEs ended, so did my exams! It was one of my friend’s birthdays on the day of the OSCE which was unfortunate, but it also meant we could go out and celebrate after our exams were finally over. We went for a lovely meal and a few drinks to celebrate and start off our 2 weeks off before third year starts. I’ve arranged a lovely week in Newquay in Cornwall which is my first holiday in a long time. I’ve been looking forward to kicking back and relaxing on the beach for a long time.

Very soon, we begin third year and our ‘Student Selected Component 2’ module, which is where we undertake a research project. I’ve spoken about this on my blog before - I’m doing a project looking at how doctors and Funeral Directors work together after someone passes away. I know this is a slightly unorthodox project but it should hopefully uncover some interesting results that I can write into a report. We get our exam results on Monday and start our projects on Tuesday, which is slightly terrifying as it means if we need to re-sit we have to continue with third year at the same time as revising for resits. Fingers crossed!!!

Lucinda Sidbury : 19 Sep 2019 13:56 |  Tags: Graduate-Entry Jordan Mbchb Medicine Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Signing off for Summer

What. A.Year.

It’s flown by and it only feels like 5 seconds ago I was walking in through the doors of WMS and collecting my orange lanyard. I still can’t believe that I’ve managed to learn as much as I have learnt and got through the exams. If you had shown to me all the work I would be doing over this year and how much I would have to learn back in September, I probably would have frozen to the spot with fear.

Apart from the academia, I have learnt so much about how I need to approach next year. For starters, I need to take time out. I’ve spent too much time glued to my desk in the MTC before exams and I was most certainly burnt out by the time we reached the end of OSCEs. I want to get involved in running student seminars, anatomy days, physiology days and take time out for climbing and friends. I also want to get involved in research up at UHCW and start to build on my CV and surgical experience in the field I want to follow.

Second year also brings about the arrival of SSC1 which is a module we get to pick. There were a couple of options that took my interest, but I decided to go for Middlemarch (medical humanities) as my first choice and medical ethics as my second. This morning I found out I got my first choice of Middlemarch and I can’t wait to get into the book when it arrives tomorrow. I was surprised that I got my first choice because this is normally the most popular one so I was pretty happy when it came through. I am looking forward to it because I can potentially bring my favourite book into the coursework element of it, and I don’t need telling twice to be able to talk about “The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time”.

I am also looking forward to maintaining my links with GOSH over the next year. I have been privileged enough to be invited back to sit on their summer school de-brief to discuss how to promote GOSH educational events, and hopefully be able to volunteer at their conferences in the future. This is the hospital I have always dreamed of working in. The recent separation of the twins conjoined at the cranium was just the extra motivation I need to keep going. I want to be there, at the front line of developing technologies helping to make critically ill children’s lives better. I knew I always wanted to work in the field of paediatrics, but having experienced and talked to the clinicians at GOSH, I know that’s where I need to be and where my personality and enthusiasm fits in the best.

GOSH seems to be a repeating theme with me and during the past couple of weeks, I have also been to Brain School which has been set up by a GOSH neurosurgeon. I’ve wanted to attend this event for a while but it’s difficult to get down to London with the first-year timetable so now I am back in Kent, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to go. The lecture was given by Prof. Mark Wilson (who is also running trials at Warwick!) and he talked about Neuro trauma and how these patients need to be treated more specifically in the field. I also learnt a few “pub quiz” facts such as “the cranium will always contain the same amount of blood when you die no matter if you have died from haemorrhage or asphyxiation” and “the brain is the only organ that is protected against atmospheric pressure”. We were also introduced to the Good Sam app which allows a by-stander to activate an alert for a cardiac arrest to near responders and for remote responders to see the patient’s stats, just by the camera. It uses some AI technology but just by holding the camera to the patients face, it shows blood oxygen saturation and heart rate with complete accuracy. This was incredible and I can imagine how critical it will be for incidents in remote areas where it may take responders more time to arrive at the scene in comparison to an inner-city cardiac arrest.

I am now signing off for the summer. I’ve got some work with Medify to try and give me a bit of pocket money but I want this summer to be a break. This has been a hard year. I am slightly nervous abut adapting to the change of learning style in January next year from lectures to bedside teaching. I don’t deal hugely well with dramatic changes and it will be weird coming out of 4 straight years of lectures to an academic day once every two weeks. However, I am looking forward to it. There’s only so much lecture hall you can put up with! I’ll see you in September!

Good luck to the second years who are currently revising for their exams!

Hattie Trigg : 15 Aug 2019 10:00 |  Tags: Abbie Gem Gosh Graduate-Entry Mbchb Medicine Student University Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

# NOF, #cutebabies

Last weekend I took part in the second year MOSCE day. A MOSCE is the same thing as an OSCE, but a mock/practice version. Second year is quickly coming to an end, with only 5 weeks left until our end of second year exams, one aspect of which is our OSCE (or clinical examinations). The MOSCE was kindly set up and run by current third years, and was set up like an actual mock-exam, where we rotated around various stations. In these we did various clinical skills, for example a history-taking for chest pain and then interpretation of an ECG.

In our first year OSCEs last year we would have 10 minutes to conduct a clinical examination or history (so one station would be 10 minutes taking a chest pain history). This year, however, we only have 7 minutes and we are expected to complete multiple tasks in that time (so it can be a short history, an examination and interpreting a test result all in one station). These are much closer to how we will actually be working as doctors, but that doesn’t make it any less daunting. There is a real time pressure to complete the various tasks in the time – its almost like a quiz show where the prize isn’t a holiday in Hawaii, it’s a step in the road to a medical degree!

On Monday I had my last labour shift for this year. We’ve had three labour shifts across this block and I have been lucky enough to see a variety of different births (including caesareans, natural births, forceps deliveries). I’ve been really lucky to have the chance to see so much, and I feel as though I’ve seen a good variety of cases to provide a good grounding for more detailed training on Obs & Gynaecology next year. I feel hugely privileged to have been present at these births and a very small part of seeing these babies into the wide world. Nothing beats the blues like seeing a cute baby!

Today I attended Fracture clinic with my Orthopaedic consultant. When I started this block and found out my consultant was an Orthopaedic surgeon, I was dreading having to spend time in Orthopaedics as so far on the course I really hadn’t enjoyed it at all. For whatever reason, I just didn’t find bones, tendons or muscles (the remit of Orthopaedics) interesting in the slightest. However….I have really enjoyed my time this block! This has surprised me (and probably everyone around me), but we’ve done some cool things and seen some complicated fractures and bone injuries. I am really drawn specifically to the Trauma aspect of Orthopaedics (so broken bones and car accidents etc), and look forward to hopefully spending more time in fracture clinic and in theatre soon.

Medicine sometimes feels like another language, so here is one abbreviation to help demystify things slightly. Your femur is your thigh bone, and at the top there’s a narrow area we call this the neck. In patients with osteoporosis (brittle bones), this neck is a weak area which can break with falls and accidents. For whatever reason, a fracture is written as a hashtag (#), so a fractured neck of femur is called a # Neck of Femur (#NOF for short).

Lucinda Sidbury : 13 Aug 2019 09:24 |  Tags: Gem Graduate-Entry Jordan Mbchb Medicine Student University Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Visiting GOSH

I decided that despite a year of intense studying, I had not quite had enough of sitting in a lecture theatre. I had been lucky enough to win a free ticket to GOSH Summer School and having passed first year, I was excited to get on a train to pop home for a couple of days so I could commute to London. However, come 8:50am on the Monday morning, I was not enjoying the crush on the train.

I got to GOSH for 9:15am and picked up my name badge and they had changed it to say second year which was lovely! I ended up chatting to a medical student from Vienna before we had our first session of the day from Prof. Fertleman about her life as a paediatric consultant. I really enjoyed her talk as she was lively, and you could see the passion she had for her job. I also found out later she likes to terrorise the junior docs after she ran after one of them on their first day shouting “They are stealing the notes, they are stealing the notes” before catching up with them and saying “Only joking, I’m your consultant, let’s start the rounds, shall we?”. I think I would have needed a week off after that scare if it had been me.

We also had a couple of talks from surgeons at GOSH which was my original career plan. The surgeries to correct birth defects were fascinating to listen to and I could see myself coming away from the brain and to the pioneering surgeries in this field. This defect away from my norm surprised me as I was pretty much set on my career path! We also had a talk from Prof. Paolo De Coppi about his work in regenerative medicine. He was part of the team that created the first stem cell tracheal transplant and the recipient is still doing well two years later. This again was incredible to learn about as these Stem Cell transplants will become the norm for us as we progress through our career.

We were also given a lot of careers advice through dedicated careers lectures and a career fair. The idea of an F3 year between qualifying and starting specialty training kept being repeated to us over the course of the three days so it is something I need to look into. The careers fair was useful because we were able to talk to consultants without the traditional student-consultant barrier and I got some insight into different specialties which has made me think about what I want to do when I qualify. One of these was PICU (paediatric intensive care unit). The consultant was lovely and was open and honest when we asked him about why he has chosen PICU over NICU. I was also able to chat with the professor who had run a session for us on the first day in which my group won the presentations and a GOSH textbook! I was chatting to him about getting into research and what consultants expect from their medical students when it comes to helping out on projects in hospital. He was lovely and told me to just get out there and do it. It did boost my confidence a bit because being in a lecture theatre where you are the only one who didn’t get straight A’s at A Level, you can feel a bit like the underdog. I also had a conversation with one of the Neurology consultants at GOSH about how best to prepare for applying to work in the neurosciences and the answer was what I was expecting: Get involved in research and show dedication. He seemed receptive when I was talking about my undergraduate degree so I am hoping that is a arrow in my quiver already.

After our careers fair we also had a GOSH arts session where we had 44 medical students standing up all singing, and I have to say for a bunch of people who have seen the inside of a hospital more than their own homes over the past couple of years, the harmonies were really good!

We also had a small drinks party after the second day. This was held on top of GOSH hospital and you could see out all over London. It was a beautiful day and we were being shown buildings such as the royal collages around GOSH. It was a lovely evening just getting to talk with other med students from different universities. I even bumped into a F1 from George Elliot! I also got talking with a soon to be F1 about being a medic at Glastonbury and he was telling me about how they managed to get discounted training though having a large group so I’ll be looking into getting a couple of Warwick guys down!

Overall the three days were invaluable to me. The best advice I received all week though from the medical director at GOSH was “you shouldn’t ever change yourself to suit the job you are going for, instead be bold and be the person to be different”, so I guess surgery has a quirky, excitable medical student heading their way!

Abbie

Charlie Gallan : 19 Jul 2019 11:51 |  Tags: Abbie Gosh Mbchb Student Summer Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem