I got to channel my inner Meredith Grey (kinda)

It only feels like two seconds a go since I wrote my last blog on here. Second year is a weird mash of having a slightly slower pace academic side of life, but then taking on everything you can get your hands on outside of medicine. So, it’s no surprise that I am tired already.

I’m still enjoying lectures and I really like this turn towards more clinical thinking. However, I know on the horizon are the transition weeks. I am nervous about these, for the past 4 and half years all I have known are lectures so this change of pace of learning is going to be hard to adapt. However, I am leaving this to November Abbie to deal with.

One amazing thing that has happened was my surgical induction. I had been looking forward to this a lot as I am sure I want to pursue surgery as a career. I know I must start building up my portfolio now, so I was keen to get into scrubs. I managed to get to Rugby for 7:30am (no small feat for someone who does not drive) and spent the next 20 minutes wandering around St. Cross trying to find the theatres before I eventually found them tucked away in the corner. The staff were lovely, and I was soon in scrubs (having taken the classic selfie) channelling my inner Meredith Grey (ok, let’s face it, I am more of a JD than anything!). I was introduced to the surgical team of who I was going to be shadowing and was luckily enough to watch the entire patient journey from them being put to sleep to waking up. I watched a hip replacement and for someone who has only seen Neurosurgery before, orthopaedics is definitely another world away. There is more protective gear to be worn so the surgeons walked in dressed in their normal gear plus these sci-fi type masks which gave them the resemblance of aliens on another planet. I also liked being able to see more of the operation and understand what was going on. Block 4 last year was not my best friend but I was still trying to drag up some memory of anatomy. I could remember the nervous supply, which for a neuro I suspect is good ! I was also chatting to the scrub nurse before asking about all the equipment. They had (for want of a better word) cheese grater like drills to drill into the hip socket. When they were eventually used , I decided that grated cheese was not on the menu for dinner this week. It was incredible to see the power behind this surgery and I really enjoyed my morning. I also got to see someone have spinal anaesthetic which was a slight “fan student” moment as we had learnt the theory behind these in a lecture the week previously.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay in the theatre all day as I was pulled away for bedside teaching, but the following week brought another love of mine. Paediatrics. I got to spend the morning with children who were going to have surgery. This meant I spent most of my morning blowing bubbles for children to play with. I even got a health examination by a four-year-old who decided my elbow was broken and preceded to fix it with a toy drill. I’m pretty convinced this is not NICE guideline approved but I’ll let them off this time. I’m not sure who was having more fun with bubbles and make-believe games on the ward that morning, me or the kids.

Outside of medicine I have also just been made the NANSIG rep for Warwick which was a huge moment for me. NANSIG is The Neurology and Neurosurgery Student Interest Group in the UK. They are huge so I was shocked they picked me, there are so many other people here who would have been amazing! I am going to be helping on their studies over the year which I am excited about. It is also going to give me more experience in research which I believe I desperately need! Revue has also started rehearsals for the 9^thof November. I loved this last year and it became a much-needed break from medicine. The script is just as amazing this year and I can’t wait to show it to everyone. It is one of the highlights of the calendar where everyone joins together for a comedy evening but we also raise money for a local charity so in the end, it’s all for a good cause !

That’s it for now, join me in November when I will be even more nervous about transitioning to clinical medicine!

(If you don't know who Meredith grey is or JD - then you need to watch Scrubs and Grey’s Anatomy)

Eden Villiers : 23 Oct 2019 08:48 |  Tags: Abbie Mbchb Patients Student Wards Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

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

We are back for seconds!

So, I am back, and have been for four weeks now. It’s been really busy, so I have had barely any time to sit down and think about what has gone on these past 4 weeks but now I have some spare time so let's begin!

We arrived back two weeks before the freshers arrived, it felt both good and weird to be back. Everything was the same, but different at the same time. We have now shifted to being grown up clinical medical students, so our lectures are reflecting that. The lectures are less of “this is how it works and what happens when it goes wrong” and more “it’s gone wrong, now let’s fix it”. I finally feel like I am training to become a doctor! I have also been hot on making sure I keep to my promises from last year in keeping myself well and energized to work. I make sure I stop working at 8pm each evening and just spend the next four hours doing whatever I want, I don’t feel guilty from taking a step back from medicine and even just 4 weeks after putting those measures in place, I can’t believe how I got through first year the way I did.

I am also a residential tutor this year. This means I live on campus in a block with 89 odd freshers (I have my own flat thankfully!) and be their first point of call through the year. So far, I have loved this role and it’s nice to think that I may be helping freshers get through the hardest first two weeks of term they will ever have. However, they have given me two separate types of fresher’s flu of which I am not thankful for them for, but I guess I will forgive them.

We are also now in hospitals on Mondays and I love it (despite my early bus rides from campus). We get to spend more time on the wards, where we will be working one day. I can now take blood from patients as I passed my TDOC on Monday (whoop). One moment that has stuck with me whilst doing my first clinical learning opportunity session with the REACT team at UHCW. My tutor suggested I go and see a patient with Parkinson’s who had significantly deteriorated and was severely ill. I went into the room and instead of throwing 21 questions at the wife, I ended up just helping her care for her husband by helping her clean her husband’s beard from custard. The wife looked exhausted and my first instinct is tea, tea solves everything. I dashed off to make her some, so I now know where the tea station is in ED (which I believe will come in handy) and when I came back, she was alone. I asked if she had had anything to eat and managed to find her some (very dry, very crumbly toast). I went to sit with her just to offer some comfort, but I was whisked away by my supervisor, I hope I helped her a little though! That singular moment there showed me why I had battled my way through first year and what I have to look forward to now I am out of lectures.

AC1 (Advanced Cases) block is a lot less intensive than first year, instead of 5 lectures a day we get 5-7 a week. It feels amazing and I don’t feel like I am swimming against the tide. It’s enabled me to get more involved with life outside of studying. I am a medic mother with a fellow neuro friend of mine, and we have two kids in the year below whom we basically cheerlead on through the year. My kids are also neuro inclined so we are one big brainy family, just as how I imagine my actual family to be! I am also excited to get to teach on Anatomy and Physiology days as well as setting up Flash Seminars to allow more opportunities for peer teaching for those not involved in Student Seminars. I have also re-visited my beloved climbing wall where I fully realized how much I missed climbing over summer. I am even signed off now to belay other people up the wall, something my little sister is particularly excited about.

So far, Year 2 has been brilliant, and I can’t wait to get further stuck into this block. Next Monday, I have the thing I have been waiting for… my surgical induction! I’m now off to a communication skills session with a SIM patient so I guess this is it till the end of the month. School is officially back.

Lucinda Sidbury : 08 Oct 2019 09:49 |  Tags: Abbie Blog Mbchb Medicine Second Warwick Year |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

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