Half a doctor hits the wards

[halfadoc]

Hey, I've made started a blog about life as a clincal student on a different site but have just seen this section here... so I'll put a bit of each blog onto this bit and if you are interested in reading more about clincal med student life then you can check it out there!
Here is my intro post:

My life in a nutshell



So I am half a doctor. Actually I am not; I would not be able to diagnose, examine or treat half of all patients, I cannot yet even insert a catheter - one of the most basic junior doctor tasks (in fact I still have problems taking blood), but as a third year medical student, in feb I will have reached the 'halfway there' mark in my studies and so supposedly am halfway there to graduating as a british doctor. Cool. But also bloody scary as by now consultants, friends, family and even lower year medical students expect me to know something, anything about medicine. The scariest fact is, I'm not sure I do. I've passed the exams so far, celebrated the results and regretably promptly forgotten everything I ever learnt....

Check it out at Life as 1/2 a doctor if you are interested in more of this post

[halfadoc]

Here is the start of todays post:
So how would you describe that pain?

A long week. This week I have been "on take" twice and have been in for my earliest yet post take ward round at the horrific time of 7.15am. Ouch.

Check it out if your interested at Life as 1/2 a doctor

[halfadoc]

Another week, another post, if you want to see the full thing check it out at Life as 1/2 a doctor: Sometimes you can't win . Have a great week!

Sometimes you can't win

I had some interesting patient experiences this week, so I'm going to talk about them but to preserve confidentiality obviously I won't use any actual names and I'm not going to give all details to further ensure the patient is not recognisable (this is also why I never mention what medical school I am at as I do not want people to be able to work out what hospital I have met particular patients at).

On monday in a clinic for a particular progressive chronic disease (again I will not mention what) I met a lovely elderly (ish) couple. The husband was the sufferer of the chronic disease but his prognosis at the moment for that was very good and he had years left before it would become a problem. At the moment he was just attending clinic so that it could be monitored and he could be educated about what choices he had further down the line. This was one of his early clinic appointments so the consultant was suggesting his wife and him attend a group patient education session on his future possible treatments. The great thing about session like this is that they allow the patient to meet other people who are in exactly the same position and so not feel so isolated in their misfortune of getting a chronic conditon. The couple were very positive about the suggestion and so were going to attend the next session. I had really enjoyed meeting this couple and it was nice to see how chronic conditions can be managed positively and effectively. Unfortuanately though when the consultant looked through some recent scans the patient had had (purely to teach me for my education, not because he was expecting to see anything) things did not turn out to be so positive.

[halfadoc]

Start of this last weeks blog:

Patient stealing and the end of my general medicine rotation
Been a bit overdue in posting this as have been a bit busy over the last week and a bit, for once this was mainly in a social way as its been my 21st this week - yay for legal USA drinking should I ever go there. Medicine has also been busy as this week is my last on general medicine so have been trying to complete my logbook (logbooks are the bane of a 3rd year medics life at my medical school, we have to get signatures to show we have attended particualar sessions, met various multiproffesionals and been observed practising various clincal skills).

The problem with our logbooks is that you have to get the signatures and as a result end up missing sessions that may be more useful educationally in order to get a signature. For example this morning I went to see the hospital Chaplain to find out about his role so that I could get my 10th and final "Multi Proffessional" experience signature. But as he couldn't do it any other time I had to see him rather than going to an additional teaching lecture, as that was optional and did not require a signature. It was admittedly interesting finding out what the chaplain does and how the chaplancy service at the hospital works (and I suppose will be useful to some medical students so that they know in the future they can refer patients there, but to be honest I already knew it existed so Im not sure I gained that much) but I'm sure my future patients would prefer I'd attended the lecture this morning by the famous visiting Clinician. That said I suppose logbooks do stop some people just skiving off.

Last tuesday I had my last "on take" to do and it proved to be a very annoying experience.....

See more at www.halfadoctor.blogspot.com!

[halfadoc]

Crash call!
Here is the start of my latest blog...

On friday (two weeks ago!) had the most awesome ward round ever! Literally! Reading the title of this blog you might think I'm a bit weird for saying that but I'll tell you now (spoiler alert..) that the patient was ok at the end so I think I can say legititmately say that it was awesome. So heres what happened...
I was on a ward round on CCU (cardiac care unit) with one other student and a lot of doctors (3/4 registrars, and 3 F1/F2's and we were going around seeing patients in turn who had recently had acute coronary events - such as angina, MI's or had just had arrthymias detected. After seeing several patients we reached one elderly gentleman whose heart was absolutely racing at over 200 beats per a minute and his monitors were bleeping away to alert the staff to this problem.....

To read more please visit Life as 1/2 a doctor

[halfadoc]

Start of new blog below, for the whole thing please go to Life as 1/2 a doctor: A failed vampire
Also if you have any feedback on my blog I would love to hear it so please feel free to comment on the above link
A failed vampire
So now I am on surgery... Stop reading now if you are eating or about to have dinner

For the last three weeks and remainder of this week I have been on GI surgery, I have quickly learnt that this is a strange area of medicine where patients go if they have abdominal pain and/or poo problems. Whilst asking patients how their bowels are working is a common question in all areas of medicine, GI surgeons really like to concentrate on it, if you forget to ask exactly when a patient had their last bowel movement and its errr consistency (I did tell you to stop eating!) then you haven't taken a history fully. I've become quite blase remarkably quickly about asking patients about such an intimate area of their lives, to start with though I can't deny I found it a bit embarrassing to ask someone that and even caught myself once refering to stools as "Number two's".... Opps!

[halfadoc]

New blog!

Easter holiday envy: Welcome to your career
A real mixed week of excellent GI teaching, being yelled at by admin staff, meeting a fantastic recovering anorexic, starting vascular, and having my last official surgery "on take". Where to start!



Well lets start with where this week falls in all students at my universities timetables. Well like students at universities across the country they are now enjoying the comfort and relaxation of home cooked food, lie ins and the chance to catch up with friends from home. And me? Well nothings changed really, my friends from home are contacting me asking when I am around for a catch up and the answer regretably is...well sorry I'm just not really. So this is the life of a 3rd year: holidays we have are shorter, days are longer and some holidays disappear altogether. At better moments I even forget last year I would have been on a month holiday around now and at other times the remainder of the lazy uni student in me (I feel this is a side that is disappearing bit by bit with every 8am I successfully make) feels that something is dreadfully wrong because shouldn't I be watching telly and eating edible food about now?!

Please read the rest of my blog at: Life as 1/2 a doctor

[halfadoc]

A much overdue blog:

Catch up
Well its been some time since I've posted so will try to feel in the gaps a bit...
Since I last posted I have finished vascular, had a week of urology experience and started + now finished paediatrics.

Vascular wasn't really my cup of tea - it was very gory with lots of leg ulcers and ischaemic legs with gangrenous toes. There is (fortunately) no smell quite like an infected leg ulcer. If you are a smoker perhaps paying a visit to a vascular ward might help you to quit - during my time there it was fair to say most of the patients were smokers/ex heavy smokers and/or diabetic. I only saw one surgery during vascular and that was a leg amputation due to ischaemia which had caused irreversible tissue damage.

This was quite a strange and brutal operation to watch, and literally involves the bones being sawn through. I found it quite surreal watching someones leg being taken off - I suppose this was because in medicine obviously normally you are doing everything you can to avoid long term damage to the patient but this was a situation where irreversible damage has occurred and now the surgeons job is really "damage limitation".

To read this rest of my blog please visit Life as 1/2 a doctor: A catch up..
Please comment and let me know if you like it - might give me the motivation to remember to blog occasionally!

[halfadoc]

Haven't blogged in almost a year, fail lol. But if you want to catch up with where I am now here is the start of my long long long overdue blog. The rest as ever is at Life as 1/2 a doctor. Halfadoc xx:

A year off? Maybe not..
Well I haven't posted in almost a year now, and this isn't gonna be a very long one (as why I have decided to post when I have a wedding to pack for and a dissertation to write I have no idea!) but I will try and catch you up in small chunks.

I finished my third year, it,was,hard. No doubt about it. The posts stopped because I was struggling to keep on top of both my ongoing rotation whilst at the same time trying to cram like crazy for the mass of exams at the end of the year that came rapidly one after the other. It was a shame because my very last rotation was paediatrics/ obgynae which was the rotation I had most been looking forward to all year. I really want to do paediatrics so it was a shame that I could not dedicate all of my time during this rotation to seeing as much as possible, however I had to find a balance because I needed to revise hard for my exams. I will try and retrospectively fill in on this rotation later...


I made it through my exams somehow on first attempt which was a massive relief because I have know idea where I would have found the strength to do a retake after such an exhausting year. Those who had to and made it through have my absolute respect because I hate to imagine how stressful and exhausting that must have been. So where am I now? Well between my third and fourth medical years we have the option to do what is called an "intercalated degree" . This is effectively where you enter the 3rd year of a normal degree and end up with a BSc on the basis of just this year (your first two years are thought of as being your pre clinical medical year in order to make up the credits but these don't actually count to what grade you get). I choose to do this extra year as did a lot of the undergraduates in my year. However whilst most of my year went of to do (in my opinion) quite dry, very sciency subjects such as immunology or physiology and mostly stay at our home university or go to london, I decided to buck the trend and head to loughborough university to study Sports Science and test out this whole renowned "Loughborough Experience"

[halfadoc]

A bit more of a catch up on what I am up to . The rest of the blog (in a nicer format style with picture etc to break up the text ;D ) is at Life as 1/2 a doctor so please visit here to see the rest xx
Its not PE

When I came to loughborough I wasn't quite sure what to expect from sports science, I had a vague idea that I might brush up on my anatomy which has been increasingly forgotten since my pre clinical years and learn a bit about sports injuries which would hopefully be helpful whatever future speciality I pick.

When I tell everyone Im intercalating in sports science everyone assumes that means I want to be a sports doctor, to be honest, I really don't. I want to do paediatrics but there is only one intercalated course really relevant for this at the moment and this year is the first year they are running it so sadly there was only 1/2 external places making it very competative and I didn't get on it. So I was left choosing from 3 other intercalated places - I could have stayed at my home university and studied psychology, gone to london and studied maternal/foetal health or come here to loughborough. I really wanted to experience somewhere different for a year so that ruled my own uni out. The london course looked interesting in aspects but contained a bit too much embryology for me which I'm not really a fan of. I was seriously tempted to go to london though because I thought it would be a really cool place to live and experience for a year plus a lot of my friends from medical school had got places to intercalate there so I would not be leaving everyone behind. In the end though the prospect of doing a course I prefered the look of (I thought it looked much less dry and dull) and the chance to not be a sheep and to do something completely different swayed me.