Final Placement of the Year!

So today was Day 1 of my final placement of 2011. I'm only on this placement for 3 weeks so yay, but that also means...EXAMS are coming up. Been revising for the last 2 weeks and it's bringing good ol' memories of how much I hate revising. It's tedious, tiring, and stressful. Oh and I have to juggle it with placements as well. Luckily I've been placed in a fairly slack placement (Endocrinology) so hopefully I won't have to be too committed.

Met my consultant today and I always believe in first impressions. If you want to impress:

1. Dress well
2. Show up early
3. Be keen
4. Read up on the specialty

Today, I was 15 minutes late due to road closures and traffic, I ran to the ward so my shirt was all over the place, haven't read up on the specialty as I have been revising the respiratory system, and I was groggy from 3 hours of sleep. Nice one. The consultant wasn't very impressed as I bumped into him as he was leaving the ward to start his ward round. If I was perhaps a few minutes later I would've been able to follow the other consultant on the ward who is on another team as he was late himself, and I wouldn't have looked as bad. Lucky me. Anyways embarked on a ward round which spanned across the whole hospital (literally). My partners and I were out of breath by the time we reached our first port-of-call: Medical Assessment Unit (MAU), as it was quite a long walk and my consultant walks extremely fast.  From time to time we had to jog to catch up with him!

Saw quite a lot of patients - all seemed pretty ill. I also noticed a trend that most of the patients are quite confused. We had one patient who told us that her husband had passed away 30 minutes earlier, and seemed quite depressed. However, when asked what date it is she thought it was the 10th of October, 2009! She didn't know where she was either and didn't know what our consultant was (expected answer = doctor, she had no clue!). She is a new patient and the consultant wasn't sure whether the news of her husband's passing was whether she was confused or it really did happen. At this point my partner and I left the patient and stepped to one side as our consultant talked to a nurse about the patient's story. Unfortunately it was quite noisy and we couldn't hear what the nurse had told our consultant. I guess it is now just a mystery to us. Anyways our ward round lasted 2.5 hours (which isn't too bad as I've been on 4 hour ward rounds).  At the end we were told that today was our consultant's last day and another consultant will be taking over for the month. But because our consultant isn't actually leaving the hospital he now has more time to teach so he offered to teach us this week on anything we would like. It was great news as endocrinology is quite complex and it would be great revision for exams. However, that also means I will have to go in tomorrow morning to meet the new consultant as he will be the one to sign us off for the placement. I wasn't planning to go in so I could stay home to revise - guess that won't be happening. Who knows, this consultant might be really nice and good at teaching, so I guess there is something to look forward to! Cross my fingers that this new consultant won't be stern/serious/intimidating. Some of the doctors on the ward knows of this consultant and they say he is quite nice. Hopefully they were being honest. Bring on tomorrow!