Tuesday 23 November 2010

Treading Water

For once the reason I haven't blogged is not because I have nothing to say, but because I've been so busy! So busy in fact that I feel like I'm constantly running around doing stuff, but not really getting anywhere... especially with sign ups!

Regardless of that feeling I'm in a pretty chirpy mood. This may have something to do with the sunshine, or something to do with the fact Christmas is coming... but is more likely to do with the nice young man I've been spending my free time with. Enough about him for now... I'm sure I'll bore you all with lots of details at some other point, you probably want to know what else has been keeping me busy.

End of last week I spent some time in the admitting ward of the hospital I'm placed at. Clerking in patients, managing them and then attending the post take ward round. It's reminded me of why I want to be a doctor, even though it was geriatrics, it was pretty fun. There was a steep learning curve, mainly to do with ordering tests and bits and bobs but the other junior doctors and the nurses were all really helpful. I love seeing everyone work as a team, as seems to happen with this geriatrics firm and the nurses on all the wards.

At the end of a full day of clerking in patients I was exhausted. I didn't even know how I was going to get up to attend ward round the next morning. I'm glad I did though. All the hard work paid off. The notoriously difficult to please consultant not only complimented me on my hard work, but then went and showed me off to the other consultants as "the really hard-working medical student who clerked and managed more patients than the sho's"

Part of me wanted to die with embarrassment and the other part of me wanted to have a t-shirt printed with it written on in HUGE letters.

Annoyingly even with all this hard work I still haven't got that many sign ups compared to other people because I just don't have time to trawl the wards to get things observed. I'm hoping on my night shift this weekend (yes exam Saturday, night shift Sunday, social life... gone.) I'll be able to sweet talk some friendly nurses into helping me get some bits signed off. I really really really want at least 20/30 sign ups done this term.

Lily xXx

1 comment:

Dr Grumble said...

A very good example of how sign-ups get in the way of real learning. The more we get students (and doctors) to jump through hoops the less they take responsibility for their training.