Defying Gravity

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We Love The NHS

If you’ve turned on the television or read a newspaper or, really, been alive in any way at all this week, you’ll know that there are NHS-related rumblings coming from across the pond.

I was sixteen before I knew that there was a fundamental difference in the funding of the American healthcare system compared with the funding of the British healthcare system. I’d lived my whole life in a country where we have universal healthcare. I had experienced at first hand the systems in Malta and Germany and Australia, where they also have universal healthcare. I was aware that no such thing existed in most of the developing world and that the economic divide would mean world-class healthcare for the rich and, very often, nothing at all for everyone else… but I had no idea that healthcare in America operated under the same basic idea. I mean, why would I? What possible reason could I have had for thinking that the world’s only remaining superpower wouldn’t make sure that all of its citizens were able to access medical care when they needed it?

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It ain't over 'til it's over

I’d guess that for the people whose A-level results came out on Thursday, the dust is beginning to settle.

For some, it’ll have meant waking up with a celebratory hangover. If that’s you, my heartiest congratulations. The only thing you need to do now is to enjoy the last few weeks of your summer holidays, let yourself get excited about what comes next, and not argue with your parents when they try to stock you up with bedsheets and twenty pence pieces and a month’s worth of groceries (trust me, you’ll be grateful for it).

For others, there will have been tears. There are many, many options open to people who didn’t make their conditional grades — re-sits and graduate entry, to name the most popular, and what’s right for one person might very well not be right for another. But when I got my A-level results, six years ago, I was in the tearful group, and to you, I offer this story.

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And the cry went up -- SSMs are out!

I’m doing Clinical Haematology and Oncology.

After the disaster of my last SSM (those who were around in January will remember the Drugs in Sport debacle), my main objective was to get something clinical. On the one hand, this meant that I chose things a little more carefully and made absolutely sure not to choose anything that I wouldn’t be happy to actually do.

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The Joy is in the Journey

For students at Glasgow, this weekend has marked the official beginning of term.

On the weekend that I moved in, my parents got lost. That’s mostly what I remember. They were driving from Newcastle to Glasgow in a two-seater van that was crammed full of all my possessions, and I was getting a bus from Newcastle and then changing onto a train at Edinburgh, and, when I called them from Edinburgh, they were lost. They claim it was the sat nav’s fault. I claim that it’s not rocket science to figure out that if you’re in England and you’re driving to Scotland, following the signs for The South is the wrong way. That was two years ago (and, no, we’re no closer to resolving that particular argument). It was my fourth year at university, my second shot at being a fresher, and the beginning of my first week as a medical student.

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In academic terms, I’ve had a very chilled out start to the term. I haven’t seen any patients yet, but soon, and in the meantime, the lectures are really interesting and the it’s all been very well-organised. I’ve got enough on my timetable to keep me busy, but I’m not working like a maniac. I’ve got a good group. It couldn’t be more different from my last SSM. I’m ridiculously happy to be back to work. Perfect, right?

No.

For most of last week, I was sitting in third year classes and feeling my brain being engaged and, damn, having fun, but I always had a little voice in the back of my head reminding me that, although I might be sitting in third year classes, I did not know whether or not I was going to have funding to do third year.

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This is my last week of Haematology/Oncology.

On Monday, I’ll be back at base camp for a week of lectures on topics both useful and useless — really, one has to question the wisdom of the faculty in scheduling a bunch of third years for an hour on How To Avoid Plagiarism, as though it’s likely to somehow be different from the way in which we’ve been avoiding plagiarism for the last two-and-a-bit years. From there, I go to Peripheral Hospital and Slightly Less Peripheral GP Practice, and ‘real’ third year begins.

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At around this time last year, I kept bumping into friends who were eager to talk about third year and tell me how awesome and easy and relaxing it was.

They lied.

Well, not quite. If you’ve just come out of second year, there are forms of mediaeval torture that sound as though they’d be awesome and easy and relaxing. I was irritatingly cheerful for most of last year — up ’til the weekend before the exams, when I made up for it with a four-day meltdown — and, now that I’m safely on the other side, even I can admit that it was a little bit like living through a horror film.

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“So,” said my tutor. “I’d like one of you to stay here and take morning clinic, and one of you to go to the treatment room.”

Oh, did I not mention that the learning curve between second year and third year is roughly the size of Mount Olympus?

I wasn’t too worried about taking clinic. This is a marked contrast to how I would have felt in the summer, when I spent some time sitting in on clinic with my old VS tutor and freaked out at her recording a patient’s BP in the notes without checking that I’d got it right. But my clinical partner and I have been assigned to this practice since October. We come in on one day a fortnight and we run the patient list together, and it’s not so scary as it once would have been (which isn’t to say that I didn’t flail horribly at my first attempt and again at my second attempt, or that I’m not enormously grateful for a GP who watches closely and steps in when we start to look hopelessly lost). I couldn’t say the same about going to the treatment room, a benign-sounding phrase that translates as, “I would like you to spend the morning doing bloods.”

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Living on a Prayer

When I was in sixth form, there was a fly-on-the-wall documentary about medical students. I didn’t watch it all and I don’t think it lasted for very long. Truthfully, I’m not even sure which medical school it was filmed at. But one of the episodes that I did watch showed the third years having their Halfway Ball — I remember thinking what an awesome milestone that must have been for them to celebrate and I remember thinking that such a milestone was a terribly long way off for me.

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How To Save A Life

I had lots of reasons for wanting to be a doctor.

I had lots of good reasons for wanting to be a doctor.

But — and within the current generation of medical students and junior doctors, I am not alone in this — one of the less good reasons was that I wanted to be John Carter.

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