My Week At Medical School - Monday.

Since I put my email address up I've had a couple of emails asking me what it's actually like being a medical student and the kind of things I get up to. Rather than trying to sum it all up in a post, as I think I'd fail miserably at getting everything across properly, I've decided to actually write a little factual diary of what I get upto this week...

Monday

6.35 : My alarm goes on. It's still dark outside and actually freezing. I jump out of bed and run into the shower to try and warm up. I load up on a big bowl of bran flakes. As a random aside I put sugar on all my cereal... is that weird? I don't know anyone else who does.

7.15 : I trudge off to get the train to go to the hospital.

8.05 : At the hospital. 25 minutes early, but the stupid trains mean that I'm either 25 minutes early or 2 late. The latter is not an option. Pour a cup of coffee down my throat in a feeble attempt to wake up.

8.30 : 2 hours of lectures. I die a little inside. This morning we have two particularly dry lecturers who both seem to zoom through their topics too fast to make notes. Thankfully one of the topics has been covered by my firm head pretty well. I spend most of the lecture rubbing my nose in a frantic effort to stop it actually freezing off my face. All that keeps me concious is period pains... woe is me.

10.30 : Now we get to the good stuff. Actual "doing stuff" in the hospital. This morning I spend 20 minutes trying to track down a registrar to make sure someone is teaching my group this afternoon. Seems like wasted time but it's better to spend 20 minutes organising the teaching than leaving it too late and getting none at all.

10.50 : Down to one of the wards to have a look and see if any interesting patients have turned up. Use the computer system to look at patient notes for a patient I'm presenting at a Grand Round later in the week. Fortunately it's good news... my patient was refusing treatment, but changed his mind this weekend and is now on the mend. Hurrah!

11.50 : Quick dash to get an overpriced cappucino. I like mixing sweetner in the froth so I have really sweet froth and really bitter coffee. Mmmmm. I also nibble on a nutrigrain bar... it's been ages since breakfast and I always seem to be hungry.

12.00 : Possibly the highlight of my week (and this is not sarcasm), radiology teaching. The registrar is amazing and explains things so well. Is it geeky that I spent the whole session actually having to sit on my hands and bite my lip shut so I didn't scream out all the answers when it wasn't my turn? I love it. We saw some amazing things today that I hope I'll never forget. Who knew that one of the pre-antibiotic treatments for TB was putting little ball things in the lung?! Well... probably lots of you, but I didn't. Great little fact.

13.15 : Mmmmm... Hummus, bread, sugarsnap peas and cherry tomatos. A lunch fit for kings, or even medical students.

14.00 : More teaching. Another really nice reg but a little more random. Learnt lots about emergency diagnosis and treatment of a patient who presents with shortness of breath. Hopefully I'll remember it. Chances are I won't. Unfortunately this reg was insanely busy so had to cut their teaching session short.

15.30 : On the train home. Resisting the urge to have a nap.

16.15 : Get in the front door. Do the most important task of the evening. Put the kettle on. Have a cup of tea. Mmmm. Tea.

16.17 : Procrastinate a bit. Make sure the electricity and gas people use my actual meter readings as unlike the woman who lived here before I don't have all my lights on all the time and run the heating at 35 degrees. Daft lady.

16.40 : Try to start the powerpoint for my presentation on Wednesday. Do all the easy bits and give up.

17.30 : Do some work I have to do based on a clinical scenario. Totally underestimate the amount of time I need. They usually take about half an hour. This was mammoth... about the size of 4 normal ones. Needless to say it took ages but I'm pleased I've done it a week in advance. Not the most interesting of topics but it's helped me revise lots of stuff from preclinical years which is really important.

19.10 : Cook some lovely pasta with pancetta, blue cheese, mushroom and spinach sauce. Is it just me or does time actually slow down while your waiting for pasta to cook? It took ages. I almost died of starvation.

20.10 : Sit down and write my blog.

I still have a fair bit of work to do tonight. I'll probably do another half hour at least on my presentation and had originally hoped to get some reading done too, but I'm not sure that'll be possible. I guess this is karma for not really doing any work in the first few weeks. Fingers crossed I'll get to go to bed by 11 or I'll fall asleep on my laptop.

Lily xXx

Random Googles Part 4

The most frequently searched topic linking to my blog is still DFS sofa allergies. You people really need to talk to DFS. I'm pleased to say that I seem to be totally fine with my lovely DFS sofa. Still... I'm refraining from licking the sofa just in case...

Worryingly someone has searched "I hate my firm and med students". I'd like to clarify that my firm are a pretty decent bunch and the majority of med students I know are lovely. As with any rule there are exceptions, but the all the nice students make up for the not so nice ones.

I suggest that if anyone hates their firm they either try harder to get on with people or see if they can be moved of firms. If you hate all medical students then maybe you shouldn't be one. If you're a doctor searching that and hate your firm, thats unfortunate. If you also hate medical students thats probably an occupational hazzard. I know we can be a pretty annoying bunch but deep down we're totally loveable. A bit like furby's. Annoying on the surface but deep down everyone wants one to nurture. At least I'd like to keep believing that.

Lily xXx

Who Chose Medicine?!

The medical students on my firm and I adopted a visiting elective student over the past fortnight. He's a really friendly guy from a big medical school in Pakistan. Obviously, as none of us have any experience of medical education outside of the UK or in fact our medical school, we were all very interested to ask all about medical school in Pakistan. In turn our elective student was really curious about medical education in the UK. Lots of questions were asked both ways, but the most eye opening question was asked the other day over a tea break. Totally unpromted this guy asked "So, who chose medicine? You or your parents?!"

The unanimous answer to this from us was "Well we did." without a second thought. This elective student was quite surprised by this as his parents had told him to study medicine, and many of his colleagues at university were in the same position. It took a lot of reasoning to convince him that for the vast majority of british medical students this wasn't the case.

Our first point was that medical school applications rely on interviews in the UK. To get through the interview you have to show a passion for wanting to study medicine and genuine motivation. He very rightly pointed out that it's quite easy to fake this. If you're that content on fulfilling your parents wishes then clearly faking enthusiasm and giving the standard "I want to help people..." response isn't the hardest thing in the world. Nor is obtaining sufficient work experience. We also tried to use the arguement that teenagers in this country are not as likely to care what their parents think. Clearly this isn't true at all. Although I had no problem telling my Dad that my career choices had nothing to do with him not everyone as the same relationship with their parents.

Since this conversation I'm left wondering more and more who's actually at medical school because they want to be. It's so taboo to suggest that it wasn't your idea to go to medical school how many people would admit to it? Surely not everyone who was pressurised into the course would hate it, I'm sure many would end up enjoying it. It does leave me thinking hard about quite how many people I see every day and work with on the wards don't actually want to be there. Even just a month of clinics has shown me that as much as I'm enjoying medicine it's not all roses. I can imagine that getting up at 6am to be in the hospital to clerk patients, wait around for doctors and be grilled over our lacking medical knowledge is an awful experience for those who don't want to be there.

This has also reminded me about the first time my Dad and I had a proper talk about what career I wanted to pursue. I'd already known that I wanted to become a doctor long before the conversation with my Dad but it was a bit tricky. Since about the age of 12 my Dad had tried to get me interested in architecture (not his career, but something that interested him). I had absolutely no interest. I tried to look keen about it, but it really isn't me. I'm neither artistic nor good as physics/maths. After years of being coerced into considering architecture my Dad accepted that it just wasn't the career for me. After this came more years of "She'll make an amazing lawyer... she's so eloquent and loves arguing." Now who wouldn't love to just argue in court all day? Unfortunately law requires lots of things that completely don't interest me, like learning laws for example. I think that probably ruled that out. So I left everyone wondering what I was planning.

One day talking about A-level choices I decided to come out with it. "Papa, I think I want to be a doctor." He didn't look impressed. Most people would be confused by this. Clearly a doctor is a well respected job, most people think it pays well and has a relatively high amount of job security. Why wasn't my Dad jumping up and down with excitement?!

"But it was doctors that killed your mother."

My Dad has a firm belief that the whole reason my Mum died was entirely due to NHS incompetance. Granted she had been going to the GP 3 months before hospital admission and was in hospital another 3 months before she was diagnosed with heavily metasasized terminal cancer. Obviously if the GP would have not dismissed her as having a viral chest infection/flu repeatedly for 3 months then maybe the cancer could have been caught earlier. Somehow I doubt that things were this simple if it took 3 months of on and off hospital admission for anyone to notice that she had cancer. Maybe even if things would have been picked up then nothing would have changed. It certainly doesn't mean that every doctor involved in my Mum's care was useless. Or does it?

I've managed to accept that doctors are only human. But I think this is one of the main reasons I want to become a doctor. To try and stop this happening to other people and to try and reassure myself that doctors aren't incompetant. Unfortunately I'm not always so well reassured (but that's a topic for another post).

Now that I've been studying for a few years, although my Dad still firmly believes that the NHS killed his wife, he's really supportive. In fact he's so supportive that it's verging on hilarious. Not only does he do the typical parent thing of introducing me as "My daughter Lily who studies medicine..." to everyone he meets if I'm there or not, he's taking the boasting to another level. On the phone in a casual conversation I mentioned I'd got a clinical skill signed off that day in my log-book. I explained to him that this meant that I was good enough at the skill for a clinincian to watch me do it and think I'd got the hang of it. Next weekend when I was at home loads of random family friends were congratulating me on it. A little OTT but very amusing. I'm sure it'll soon wear thin when he realises I have about 20 for every rotation.

Although my Dad wasn't keen for me to study medicine, now that I am he's very keen for me to be a surgeon. I think this is from some deep rooted lay-person belief that surgeons are the best and cleverest doctors. I sincerely doubt I'll ever be a surgeon for many reasons, I hate anatomy, I want a family, I like talking to patients and I have a strange obesssion with hormones and babies, to name just a fraction of my many reasons. However I do think surgery is pretty cool and exciting, so if I've been in theatre and I'm chatting to my Dad on the phone after I guess I seem pretty animated talking about it. This is more due to the fact that it's easier to get my Dad to understand what happens in a heart bypass and to tell him about how cool it was seeing a beating heart in someone's chest than it would be explaining how interesting it was seeing a certain ECG of an arrhythmia and how it was being controlled using sotalol which in fact interests me much more.

I think I'm going to have to keep convincing him that surgery isn't the only option for a successful medical student, and to be honest even if deep down he still think's I'd be better off being a surgeon I'm lucky that I can be pretty certain that he'll support me whatever choice I make. A small part of me will always be worried that I've disappointed him though, which I guess is why many people follow their parent's dreams instead of their own.

Lily xXx

Mystery of the Missing House Officers

Anna gave some amazing advice in my comments for getting the most out of clinics. On the back of this advice myself and a couple of colleagues set off to become super-dooper 3rd years.

Those on a different rotation found this advice amazing. Practically the Holy Grail of studenty tips. They found an amazing FY1 willing to help them learn how to take blood, observe their history sign offs, explain things they didn't understand and help them put together Grand Round presentations. However I came across a little problem. The department I'm with has no FY1s, it also has no FY2s... in fact it only has registrars. Confused I asked why. Specialist nurses I was told. Fantastic I thought. I'll just go and see if a specialist nurse can help. Unfortunately lack of house officers means that the specialist nurses are extremely busy. Too busy to babysit medical students. The registrars are also far too busy to babysit us. Drat.

I've spent today trying to find ways to overcome this.

1. I found some technicians who are willing to show me how to do some tests.
2. Admin at uni say they are organising a course with phlebotomy. Clearly this will be of much value.
3. I am going to try and nab an FY1 from someone else's department that is vaguely similar to mine. This does not mean actual kidnap. I just want to borrow them.

Needless to say I feel like I've wasted today trying to organise things but not getting anything done. I'm also getting worried about the lack of work I'm doing at home. Any tips on studying once in clinical years? I just can't seem to get motivated.

I'm also starting to think about my elective now. More accurately I'm starting to panic, I realise I have almost 2 years to go but it's such an expensive thing. I should probably start trying to budget for it so I know how much to save.

So much to do so little time and even less motivation.

Lily xXx

3rd Year is Getting Closer

I've finally found out the details of my first rotation. I'm going to be doing the chest rotation first. Although I can't remember anything about the heart or lungs since I've done a whole year of Endocrinology I'm pleased I've got this rotation first. I was dreading getting the neuro rotation first which I personally find a lot harder than any other part of medicine. The hospital I am placed at is a fair journey from my flat (I think about an hour maximum at rush hour), but students in the year above say it's the best place to do the chest rotation. Excitingly both my ex flatmates are also at this hospital, although one is on a different rotation and the other although on the same rotation is in a different firm. It'll be nice to be able to meet up for lunch or after uni, allowing us to all stay close. One of my biggest fears was that we'd all be placed miles away from each other and would completely drift apart.

I feel an awful lot calmer about starting 3rd year now I know where I'll be and roughly what I'll be doing. I've also started getting myself organised for the charity who's committee I'm on. I'm starting to make a big colourful journal so that the group as a whole can record their memories and feelings about everything we do this year. Fingers crossed not only will it give us something nice to look at, but it'll be useful for next years committee too.

My biggest worry at the moment is finding smart clothes suitable for the hospital. It's proving impossible to find some nice shirts which have short or 3/4 length sleeves, as we have a naked below the elbow rule for infection control. I'm hoping the bank holiday Monday sales will prove fruitful as the shops try to get rid of all of their summery smart clothes.

Lily xXx