Saturday 22 November 2008

My Week At Medical School - Friday

The more observant among you will notice that it is in fact Saturday today, not Friday. Needless to say I was very tired last night and had my lovely boyf to snuggle up to so I completely forgot about writing the last instalment of my week at med school.

Anyway, lets pretend it's still Friday....

7.30: Get up. A little earlier than I would normally considering the train I have to get, but it means I can have a vague attempt at tidying a bit before the boy arrives. I fail miserably at the whole tidying thing because I get distracted by yesterdays metro which is still in my bag. I love sudoku.

9.10: Get on the train and actually get a seat. This is total amazingness, especially as I'm wearing heels as opposed to my hush puppies.

9.40: Have the usual gossip about the night before over a cup of tea. Not much to say today as I just kept falling asleep last night. Ironically every time I woke up there was an advert on telly about people with narclepsy.

10.03: Get onto the wards and stalk the very busy SHO during her ward round. Sensing our need to actually do something useful she sent us off to get lots of bloods. Unfortunately these were off people who seemingly had no blood. Thank goodness for the elective student who managed after multiple attempts to get some blood out of these people. Worryingly they were covered in huge bruises where she'd taken blood before.

12.15: Skived off for lunch. I had a rather yummy stew thing. It even had carrots in. Unfortunately it was probably cat and carrot stew or something as it didn't really resemble or taste like anything I'd ever had before. Oh well. Cheap and tasty so I can't complain.

13.30 On the train again to go to a more central train station to get to my GP placement.

14.30: Very almost left my bag with lots of work in it at a coffee shop in the train station. Thankfully I rescued it. However I did get a lecture from the coffee shop lady. Although I only left it for about 60 seconds she insisted on lecturing me about how she wasn't a left luggage facility and that she should charge me £3 like they do. Now, realistically... I'd left it for a minute, I came running back in all flustered and was so thankful that she found it. Was the lecture really neccessary? No.

15.45: Arrived at my GP placement. I saw frolicing dear along the way to the surgery from the train station. That's how far from London we were!!

The GP was really dull. He didn't seem to know anything about any of the stuff we've been learning at hospital. Now I can understand him not having specialist knowledge but I'd think that he should at least be able to explain something like atrial fibrillation. I was not impressed. He then gave us a lecture about taking our time with histories. He recommended half an hour. If we did that in the hospital we'd be shot or the patients would die of old age before we'd finished.

He didn't even know what murmur he was listening for when he rolled the patient on to their left. I was stunned. Surely if you're going to demonstrate something you'd at least want to look up why you did certain things so you could tell the students.

However he did seem like a really nice man, and with both patients we saw he really listened to them which obviously is very important. So not all bad.

18.30: Finished at the GP in the middle of nowhere and trekked back to the train station. Between changing trains and waiting around for connecting trains the journey took me almost exactly 2 hours. I did get the chance for a gossip on the phone while I waited. My niece has broken her nose. Apparently they can't do anything about it for 10 days?! Any tips on how to help relieve the pain and help it to set straight?

20.30: Lovely boyfriend picked me up from the train station and off home I went to cook dinner and have cuddles. Perfect end to a long and busy day!

Lily xXx

2 comments:

madsadgirl said...

This has been an interesting insight into your life as a medical student. Thank you.

The Manchester Medic said...

I have enjoyed reading this series of posts. It's very interesting to see how medical schools differ from each other. In particular, you appear to get a lot more ward teaching (and do a lot more travelling!) than us.

I may have to steal your idea and do my own weekly diary in the near future.