Tuesday 7 October 2008

Presentation Panic

Argh. I have my first Grand Round presentation tomorrow and I haven't even finished the powerpoint yet!

Thankfully this is just a trial run, but having never seen a Grand Round presentation before I'm not quite sure what I'm doing. To make it worse I really don't have much of a clue about the patient I'm presenting. It's hard to present a case in the second week of clinics when we know so little.

The procrastination is not entirely my fault. I had a really long day today. By the time I'd got in and had dinner it was already 9pm. Then my phone started ringing. I had a nice girly catch up with a girly mate. As soon as I put the phone down from that I had a chat with my Dad and then after that I had a nice long talk with the boyfriend. Excitingly he may come down tomorrow evening which would be totally amazing. Even more excitingly my placement after Xmas is much much closer to him, so seeing him in the week will be even more possible.

I really need to get more proactive in clinics. Although I'm the most vocal member of my group, as a group we don't seem to get much done. I'd really like to find a junior doctor to watch them do examinations and get them to teach me blood taking, but the wards I'm on seem to scare all the junior doctors away. Tomorrow afternoon and Thursday afternoon I shall be going on a doctor hunt...

Lily xXx

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Go get some bleep numbers and get bleeping them!

Tips for catching a junior doc in a teaching mode:

1. Bleep in the afternoon - jobs fill up the morning and if the F1 is in the middle of the ward round they will not be pleased to be dragged away to answer the phone to you.

2. Have you ever taken blood before? Depending on your ward, the hospital could be a truly awful place to start... I learnt in GP land where the patients are healthyish with big bulging veins. Prob best to learn this one in a group of students with the doc overseeing and you sticking needles in each other. Ask when the F1 is free and organise everyone to be there with all the equipment do he/she can just rock up and say 'stick the pointy sharp bit here'. I'd love to teach students like that!

3. Final year students will often teach, so ask around in the common room.

4. Join the ward round - follow the F1 and offer to write the job list, or write in the notes. Then hang around after. This is the time jobs get done and you'll get to observe/practice taking blood and stuff (usually filling in those 6 xray cards for left total knees, but it can't all be fun and games!)

Hope thats mildly helpful. I was just trying to think of how I'd want to be treated if it was my student. My dept only has 4th years doing 5 week specialty placements and they spend all their time in clinic or theatre, and never come and have fun with me :(