Of Law and Medicine

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So I've been thinking of starting blogging for a while, In a similar way to the recent(ish) BBC series "doctors 20 years on" I thought it would be quite fun to try and catalogue the triumphs and failures to my hopeful eventual entry into med school.

So a a bit about me to start off with. I did a law degree, I'm now doing the legal practice course (LPC) this is a one year boring course teaching me how to fill in forms and draft contracts. Pretty boring!
Thankfully we've done with the compulsory subjects and are now well into the elective term so I have more interesting subjects like Personal Injury and Clinical Negligence to deal with!

When this year is over I have a bit of a summer and then I start training in a law firm for the next two years, becoming a fully qualified solicitor in summer 2010.

My plan is as follows:
Autumn 08 - apply for med schools (1st try), currently planning on Soton bm4, Soton bm5, UEA and HYMS. These will all be deferred entries so that my entry point will be october 2010 which fits in nicely.
These are subject to change!

Jan-April 09 Interviews etc

If I get offers at this stage, great, but if not, I have another years worth of applications up my sleeve!

So then autumn 09 - more applications, I doubt I'd apply for both of the soton courses in the 2nd year of applications as they're just so competetive, haven't really thought that far ahead yet, I have the first year to go first!

Personal statement writing is going quite slowly as I have what feels like (and literally is!) months before it needs to be ready, but uncharacteristically I'm trying to get it sorted early! I've been struggling with the introductory paragraph for a bit, but when i was struggling to sleep a few nights ago, I had a flash of inspiration which I may well use!

Aside from that, work experience, I've been working part time as a bank HCA since december last year and intend to carry that on for as long as I can in my new job, doing weekend shifts etc.
On top of that, following spending the best part of two evenings reading Dr Claytons blog (heh!) I'm now considering doing something to do with St Johns ambulance, however I doubt that will happen until late this summer as its probably better I do it where I'm going to be working for two years, rather than where I'm living for the next 2 months!

This is probably enough now for my first blog, I have two lectures later today Personal Injury & Clinical Negligence (henceforth this will become PICN) and Intellectual Property (IP) which hopefully will be interesting.

Let me know what you thought of this entry, with a bit of luck and encouragement I'll keep this going for the next 7 years or so charting my path through law and into medicine.

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Two posts in one day! Eep!
Well, lectures dont start till 1:40!

Someone messaged me asking what my qualifications are so here they are!

I got ok GCSE's, with A*A* in Double award science.
For AS levels I did Biology, Chemistry, History and Geography. I got a C in the Chemistry and a B in General Studies.
For A-levels I dropped chemistry, this was because at this point in my life I wanted to do law, and I also found the maths part of it damn hard. I hated those titration calculations!
For A-levels then I got: Biology A, History A, Geography A.
For my law degree I got a 2.1

Regarding entrance exams, I dont really want to do the GAMSAT, I am good at science, but am slightly concerned that I'd do worse that I ought to because of work this summer, and starting a proper job this autumn. I'd rather apply to unis that will take my current qualifications.
For similar reasons, and concerns about unis demanding an A in chemistry if I did the full A-level bit, I've also decided for now not to go for unis that would want a full A level in chemistry.

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Its been a busy week! My entire family descended on us (my housemates and I) in London as my sisters were both in the London Marathon. Sister A was just doing the mini-marathon, its a 5km run along the last bit of the real marathon route. It was quite exciting to watch and we braved the crowds by Big Ben to see the route. She got a coach cavalcade from her team hotel through all the closed roads to her start point! Very exciting!
Sister B ran the entire marathon in 4 hours 25mins so she was jolly happy!
After that I've just had the usual LPC (legal practice course) lectures and tutorials. This week was ok on the boredom scales, I suspect as this blog grows that the sheer mind numbing boredom of the LPC will become more obvious! Who wants to go on a course where you're taught how to fill in forms anyway?! Still, I've just got to push through it and hopefully come out the other side. Other than that, the only exciting event this week was having a Heb B booster on Wednesday!

I went to a concert last night with my dad which was really nice, he also brought me the last few editions of the BMJ and New Scientist so I'm set for bedtime reading for the next week!! We worked a bit on my personal statement too which is slowly coming together! For the last month or so I've been struggling with the first paragraph. I have some good middle-ish paragraphs and don't foresee an ending paragraph being too hard, but the opening paragraph takes something special. Hopefully last night we got it sorted, I'll let you know when I re-read it today!

Just a little explanation about the Sister A etc above, I'm currently on the LPC as I've said, and after that I have a training contract with a law firm. All this has to happen before I can start medicine. However, its reasonable to expect that my law firm would be quite upset if they discovered I wasn't planning on staying after the 2 years of my training contract. So this blog has to stay anonymous until after I leave there!

No plans for this weekend which makes a nice change and I'm pretty much out of things to say, so I'll stop now before I start rambling!

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As I'm sure I haven't mentioned before, although as my housemates are painfully aware, I've been studying anatomy in the evenings when I'm not been busy with work for the LPC.
Now that we're in the elective term of the LPC things have got a little easier. No longer do we have 4 subjects of compulsory doom to study (property, civil litigation, criminal litigation and business - not to mention research coursework other stupid bits the law society sees fit to order us to study in a superficial level of detail.) instead we have three vaguely interesting (ie, we chose them!) subjects which require a little less preparation and are generally more fun. Personal Injury (PI), Intellectual Property (IP) and Employment!

So because of this new-found freedom, I've been doing some more anatomy which has been fun, although the lectures on this site are pretty basic I've been reading around them in Grey's. On monday night I did two lectures and finished the skeletal system! Onwards I forged with muscles! I even learned the 10 cranial nerves when I was looking at orbicularis oculi and oris! Very fun!

Yesterday was my birthday which was fun. My housemates made me a cake which was tasty and we had delicious fillet steak and a few bottles of wine. They bought me Mario Kart which was great fun and we ended up finish the wine off while playing. My parents got me a physiology book (Vander) and Kumar & Clarks Clinical Medicine both of which have plenty to read and will keep me going for months!

The final slightly-chuckle-worthy thing I've been doing this week is listening to Amateur Transplants while some of their songs are quite rude in places, they're all hysterically funny although I think I prefer "Mr Burton" and the "Dorsal Hord Concerto" Worth a listen if you like slightly cynical and highly amusing songs!

Thats all for now, I have to practice on Mario Kart so I don't get beaten again by my housemate!

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Had a fantastic weekend, really nice party on saturday with lots of my friends over from uni and law school.
Then on sunday I woke up early to play in a hockey tournament. 8 games over the course of an afternoon really takes it out of you! Although we were the only team drinking pims and somehow managed to persuade domino's do deliver to the pitch. The team didn't do badly and came 4th, although given that we had an unbeaten run of 9 matches before that, it wasn't quite as good as we had hoped. Still the seasons over now so unless we get a shock game against Imperial medics again or some other club in london that was our final match.

Come monday however I was severly sore, I'd felt in pain after the first 5 matches or so, and by the end most of the team were hobbling around with some injury or another. Mine seems to have been incredible pain when walking, worsening when going up and down stairs. I'm still not completely fixed on today (wednesday) and look (and feel) like a berk when I climb slowly up the stairs in the tube!
Played a hysterical practical joke on housemates yesterday, had been told by housemate A's boyfriend to add some colour to the rice we were cooking for dinner, so I added a cap of red food colouring. In the process of putting the cap back on, I got it all over three fingers and a fair bit of the palm of one hand. My housemates hadn't noticed, so I picked up a large knife we'd used to cut up veg and walked over to them slightly glassy eyed and asked if they could get me a tissue. They fell for it hook line and sinker and the looks on their faces was priceless! I still have red hands, bah! Worth it though!

Did some more work on my personal statement last night too which seems to be the bain of my life currently, although with the help of my dad on the phone I got a good bit of stuff done on it and its starting to resemble something I might, one day, send off to UCAS.

Today nothing much to report, calculated quantum of damages in PI tutorial for a lady who was in a car crash, she'd broken her femur in three places and her humerus in one. She was also exadurating her injuries! Playing as a defence lawyer, I offered a measily £40k! I suspect the Claimants side will push for £55k+
(Just to clarify, these are pretend clients which we act for in a semi-PBL type situation for our tutorials)
[Random side note- when we were looking up cases to assess a likely amount for her injuries someone asked what a supra-trochanteric fracture was (in one of the cases she was looking it), I was a little surprised when I realised I knew the answer! Cue odd looks and questions asking how I know that *beams* ]

That's enough for now, I'm tired and have an advocacy exam later this week so need to prepare! Toodles!

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Advocacy exam went fine and another week is over.
I went to see Iron Man last weekend, and loved it, I saw it again with a different friend yesterday and it was still good. Worth watching!
Spent the weekend relaxing and did a little painting.
I'd impulsively bought a box of watercolours earlier in the week and it was quite fun trying them out. I wonder if I ought to have got oil's though, I seem to be better at doing the detail than getting a nice faint blurry skyline.

Fairly light week this week lecture wise, nothing much to report, although everybody seems to a) be doing class negotiation skills in tutorials and b) seems to have started revising!
Madness, exams are over 4 weeks away!
Managed to negotiate a settlement our phantom claimant for 28k which was great considering I recon reasonable quantum for all her injuries was atleast 40k.

Have been watching a lot of Enterprise this week, although its quite a good show some of the medical technology they have makes me laugh. I know its sci-fi, but still! A little box that can check your neural pathways and synaptic function just by waving it near your head? A syringe that can just be programmed to deliver any drug. Medicine seems so much simpler in the 22nd century!

Today after lectures I went with a friend to covent garden for some drinks, the weather has been really nice all week (BBQ's aplenty) so we just decided to go for a drink before the weekend starts. We chatted a bit about medicine as he did it and swapped dissection-lab pranks and fainting stories and mused on our general career paths to date. Nothing else really going on in life at the moment.
Medical motivation is lower than usual as I have law exams coming up, but then motivation to do that is even lower so I seem to be spending time just sitting around doing nothing a lot. Very unproductive. Must try to improve.

That's all for now, nighty night.

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Its been a while since I've updated!
I've had a fairly pants few weeks, the two weeks before last week (If you follow! Thats 2 weeks ago and 3 weeks ago!) I totally lost all motivation for the LPC. Worse than usual - totally bumbed out, couldn't be bothered preparing for more pointless tutorials where we drag out an hours worth of materials and exercises for two hours. It was horrible.
Then my mum rang and gave me the sort of exam talk that she gave me at GCSE's and Alevels and kinda kicked my arse into gear, which was nice. So last week I've actually been better, we had our final revision tutorials which I went to, and then finished classes on thursday. I revised on monday, tuesday and friday (we had full days of classes on wednesday and thursday). I was proud!

The weekend was spent revising for a Professional Conduct exam today. Its a kinda non-exam, we have to sit it, and have to be rated competent, but its not one we have a huge number of lectures or anything on. I guess its drilled into us a bit all all subjects, its a pervasive one! The exam was made slightly harder due to the following situation, a while back when my parents were down I was enthusiastically giving them bits and pieces from my room to take back so there was less to fit in the car at the end of June when I move out, included in this pile was my Company Law Statute book, largely useless as my electives aren't company related, however it was permitted material for this exam as it contains a few crucial acts! Whoops!
So I discovered this minor oversight last friday and didn't bother going home to get it. After all, I dont need a huge number of marks to pass (17 out of a 60 mark paper!) - I'd already allocated the weekend to revising Professional Conduct and given that most of it is found in the Solicitors Code of Conduct a surprisingly nice and easy to read handbook I spent the rest of my weekend memorising the key parts of the acts I was missing! note to self - check future exams before sending books home!

The exam today though went fine, there were the expected questions on the absent acts but for the multiple choice ones atleast I put the same answer as my housemates so thats all ok!

One of the questions did make me laugh - a client confirms to you that he deals in illicit drugs, this week he plans to collect some money he is owed. He freely admits to needing a firearm to do so. What do you do! (there was also something about a matrimonial dispute in there too!)
HAH! I struggled to suppress a snort of laughter in the exam! One of the options was "You would not be required to disclose anything due to rule xyz covering matrimonial matters" another "You would require your clients consent before any disclosure could be made"
Madness!
Naturally I went for the "Its ok to tell the police as theres a serious risk of injury to people" option! Glad I got around that tricky question!
This afternoon was mainly filled with a boozy lunch and various watering holes in London.

Tomorrow revision starts anew!

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The end of a year, the end of an era.

I had my last LPC exam today. It went ok I think, it was probably the exam I was most worried about before hand and the subject I was least sure of. Thankfully the paper wasn't as bad as it could have been and I knew what I was doing for all of the questions so fingers crossed I scraped together enough marks to pass. (Which, lets face it, is only 50%!)
This weekend I move out of London, which I have very mixed feelings about.
I have really enjoyed living in London, its been nice to be able to go out and get back easily, and my house and housemates have been awesome, probably the most fun and laughs I've had as a house to date. I really enjoyed biking into the centre, dodging busses and beating the tube.
However I really haven't enjoyed the course. Its been one long slog of mind numbing, soul destroying tedium. That pretty much covers it, if I could live in london without studying then it would be all fun and games!

I'm off on holiday on monday for a few weeks so will update more when I get back. I do however plan on catching up on anatomy lectures I've slacked off on due to revision, read several books I've started and seem to have been sitting on my bedside table for ages and generally relax!
When i get back I'll be working as an HCA and at a medical practice I frequent and so may even have more exciting things to blog about than my boring ex-course.

Damn I'm glad its finished!

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And I'm back!

Had a lovely holiday doing all sorts of exciting activities, canyoning, mountain biking, walking, etc. Even my parents joined in!
Spent a fair amount of time reading books too which was a nice break from the action.

Yesterday I spent the evening doing work on my Personal statement, I think I'm in the phase of finally polishing off, although then I'm going to sent it to several people who have said they'll comment on it for more opinions before finalizing it.
I also commenced the boring task of inputting all my exam results into UCAS itself which had be searching the house high and low for certificates and wracking my brain to figure out which year I did what!

Today I booked my UKCAT, its about a month off. I did some of the practice questions too and all apart from the maths-ee ones were fine. Although to say I'm worried about the maths would be an understatement! I think I'm going to spend the rest of this month frantically re-learning maths, although I got an A at GCSE I never found it particularly easy and I haven't had much use for it in the last 4 years! I'll have to get much faster.

On Monday I start work so will probably update sometime this week.
Have a great weekend, and if you're watching, enjoy Wimbledon!

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Time for a bit more bloggage.
I've been doing 2 or 3 hospital shifts a week for the last few weeks and working full time in a GP's practice the rest of the time, its hard work but I need the money.

Hospital shifts continue to be knackering and really interesting at the same time. Yesterday I was on Neuro which surprised me as so many of the patients were self caring. That was good because it meant I could go around doing Obs etc and have a proper chat with them. There were some really great characters. Most of them had good prognosis's although there was one poor lady who had had a massive stroke very young.

Another bizarre occurance yesterday, I was talking to one of the sisters about the law-medicine plan and she said "I know someone you'll want to meet!" She then proceeded to yell for one of the Dr's to come quickly! So he trots down the ward and I'm told that he did the same thing, trained as a solicitor and then became a Dr. He seemed a bit disappointed that this was all he was called for He chatted a bit, told me I should do law because it paid better, and then got paged to an arrest! Even so it was cool to find someone else who had actually done it!
I then watched a lumbar puncture (amusingly, a patients relative walked off the ward saying "I can't watch while he's having an epidural!") and bandaged a LOL's toe which was oozing.
Quite a successful day if I say so myself!

Last week I was on Trauma and Orthopaedics, irritatingly I didn't realise this was the elective ward so 90% of people had just had hip replacements although a few had been shunted across from the other ward. Next time I'll make sure I ask.

A recurring theme I have noticed is that in terms of smiles I seem to be consistently more popular with the female bays! How odd :P Still I dont mind

Today I had a long chat with a careers advisor on the phone about my personal statement. I've got pages of notes, tweaks and little alterations to do so that'll fill up my evening tonight, when I'm already supposed to be going to Mama Mia! (With a group of girls, Oo) Still it should be fun!

I actually have a few other stories about HCA shifts to share, but right now I need to get round to work so will leave this here and update it later.