Placement 2 - End of Week 2

Holy smokes what a crazy week. To be honest though there isn't much to talk about placement as I only went in 3 out of the 5 days. Well actually more like 2/5. On Monday I had my clinical skills assessment so I spent the whole day pooping myself and practising before my assessment. I was so nervous it was kind of ridiculous. I was nervous because I felt that I haven't had enough practice yet and there's just so much to think about whilst doing a clinical skill.

So it was finally my turn to do the assessment and thank goodness the assessors were REALLY nice. It was really informal and they told me that they don't expect me to be a pro at it and will guide me through each skill. Essentially I was tested on hand washing (easy), vital signs (BP, temperature, pulse, SpO2), venepuncture, cannulation, drug mixing, and finally setting up an IV drug. I didn't mind doing any of those EXCEPT for drug mixing and setting up an IV. I haven't done either of those skills since last year and I didn't get a chance to practice either of those skills prior to my assessment. I nearly started sweating bullets while doing those two skills but thankfully everything came back to me and I managed to pass all my clinical skills. That means I can officially do all of these clinical skills on real patients in the hospital as long as I am supervised.

Tuesday - standard - ward round and clinic. Clinic was really interesting. Saw 2 patients which some interesting case histories. Ward round...was a pain. Dr B was doing ward rounds which meant another grilling session. Also what I have realized is that he is PAINFULLY slow at doing ward rounds. Dr Y takes 3 hours to do a ward round....Dr B takes 4.5 hours and has the same amount of patients to go through. Anyways while Dr B was finishing writing notes in the patient's notes, my partner and I talked about the patient and the physical signs that we saw. Out of no where, Dr B turns around and snaps at us. He told us off for talking and said that if we keep getting distracted/aren't interested we can go to the library and do something else. My partner and I were like "....what?" We were confused because we were talking about the patient and what we saw, so we weren't distracted and obviously we are interested; hence why we were talking about the patient. Obviously Dr B was a bit grumpy today. The way he snapped at us really bugged us as it was uncalled for. So my partner and I had two choices: a) Piss him off more and just leave and go follow Dr Y or b) Bombard Dr B with loads of questions to show him we are interested and obviously to annoy him as much as possible. We chose to go with plan B and cue the waterfall of questions. We literally asked him about EVERYTHING. We looked at a patient's drug chart and asked Dr B about why he would prescribe these medications and why not alternatives. We started asking about the mechanisms of different drugs. I'm pretty sure Dr B got the idea that my partner and I were doing this on purpose and Dr B blazed through the rest of ward round. I guess that's one way of getting things done fast.

Wednesday - I didn't go to placement as I was helping out at the Medic's Fresher's Fair, which was quite tiring. Started setting up quite early and then had to wait for the fair to finish as I also have to help put away stuff. It was really nice meeting the new medics. Then I had an age crisis as some of these freshers look really young. I mean I saw some who barely even look 16 years old! It was crazy. We also got to showcase the Fresher's Video that we made. It turned out quite well and I think (hope) that the freshers enjoyed it.

Thursday was the usual, BUT Thursday night was the night of Medic's Fresher's Fever! I was really excited for it as there was going to be a hot tub and sand at the venue. In the end - I must say this was the best Fresher's Fever I have experienced. It had a really good vibe and for once all the Fresher's stayed til the end! The last two Fresher Fevers I went to, people left 2 hours into the party and essentially used the event as a pre-drink before going to another club. This time - people stayed all the way until the venue closed. I was so glad I got Friday off as there was no way I would've been able to go to placement. I got to get Friday off as there was another freshers event that I had to help out at: Buddy Scheme. That didn't start until 3pm....and I thought I would definitely be able to wake up for that. I ended up waking up at like 2:15pm and was literally running around my flat trying to get ready to get my butt out of the door. But yeah this week has been quite interesting. Highlight of the week must be Fresher's Fever. Yeah yeah I know I'm getting too old for it, but seriously it was amazing. Definitely a memorable night.

FRESHERS WEEK - SEPT 24, 2009

Right so today again was pretty hectic and I have been super super excited for the entire day as tonight is the medics FRESHERS FEVER FOAM PARTY!!!! Anyways I had to get through two lectures for the day which isn't too bad. Here's my schedule for today:

11:00 pm: Dissection Lecture
2:00 pm: Small Group Work

So first lecture I had was at the dissection room in another building (not med school). Today's lecture was mainly based around the dissection activities that we will have pretty frequently throughout the year. However, the dissection room is the hardest place to find. I was with a group of people and it took us 30 mins to find the room. Apparently they made the room to be super hard to find so people of the public will not accidentally walk into the room as we do full body dissections (hence many cadavers). When we got there none of us were really prepared to see anything. We thought it was going to just be a quick introduction, set some rules, and ask some questions......NOPE. When we walked in there were two gurneys in the middle of the room with a cloth covering each one. None of us really thought much about it. Let's just say when it was unveiled many people weren't exactly "ready" and didn't exactly feel too well. We'll leave it at that.

However I am very glad that I managed to get into a university which does full body dissections as the amount of things you learn from dissections are priceless. Being able to see where things are in a real human body and how things are connected just makes the learning process so much more interesting and in depth. I am truly excited for dissections and I am really looking forward to it.

After the dissection lecture we had a two hour lunch break. Had some lunch at the student union with some peeps. Lunch was okay....nothing special. Kinda disappointed because people kept hyping up the cafe. Anyways after lunch there was the official university Activities Fair. Went to go check it out and joined a few societies. It wasn't that great...again had to fight the crowd and got bounced around.

At 2pm I went over to my lecture and it was so DULL! All we did was discuss in small groups about the case study that we got on Monday....yup did that for an entire hour. The discussing itself within the group probably took 10 minutes MAX. Was so glad when the lecture was over. Made some plans with my friends to meet up before going to the party tonight. Then I went home to get ready and chill.

The medic's freshers party was SO AMAZING that I have to give it its own post. Please see the next post for details about the party. If you don't give a crap about it...don't read it. :) Again here's another tip for freshers: TRY to look ahead of time which societies you want to join at the university. It makes signing up so much easier and faster as you don't have to wander around looking for stuff to catch your eye...plus less pushing around. Pretty much you go in sign up and leave. Simple.

FRESHERS WEEK - SEPT 23, 2009

Sweet I have been waiting for awhile for this. It was medics freshers fair - clubs/societies for medics. There are societies ranging from surgical society, to medsex (?!), to medics sports teams. The British Medical Association and the MDU were there for us to sign up and they gave freebies which was a oxford clinical medicine handbook (which i heard are really useful as they are pocket sized). Plus today we got our MedSoc membership cards which costs 50 pounds (10 pounds a year for 5 years) and our white coats, dissection kit, and the most important: Medics Freshers Fever ticket/wristband!!!

Other than fighting the crowd and almost dying from suffocation (no air conditioning in the halls - imagine 250 students crammed in a small area), I managed to join a few societies. I joined the surgical society, st.john's ambulance, BMA/MDU memberships, medics hockey, and medics basketball. Quite hefty right? I know some people who joined every single society that was there! After being pushed around I met up with friends and we decided to chill and have some food/recover from being pushed around.

Today was a pretty light day...no lectures at all. Just another day for me to get to know the city. Speaking of getting to know the city, I got majorly lost today. I decided to take the bus and somehow took the wrong bus and ended up in this really weird place. Asked some people for directions and took another bus back towards the right direction..and walked for like ages to get back home. It was pretty ridiculous. But like I said...best way to get to know a place is to get lost and find your way again. Not much to post today but I will leave you with another tip:

During Freshers Fair/Activities Fair, join as many societies as you want. You can always not go to them. Societies are the best way to get to know people and especially medic societies help you to get to know upper year medics so if you have any questions about the course you can always ask them.

I notice that UCAS applications are almost over so good luck to everyone who is applying! Stressful times.