Day: Feb 27, 2020

Monday

Admin and work day today. I wanted to try and get as much of the presentation list done so I didn’t have as much pressure the rest of the week. Turns out, I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked to but the effort was there!

I also got a bit frustrated in the afternoon as I had tried to book a doctors appointment but with my timetable and the doctors. I literally didn’t have any spare time. I got annoyed. We are constantly told to take care of ourselves, but then also not to miss any teaching time. It feels like I am caught between a rock and a hard place.

Tuesday

Labour shift number 2! Rolled out of bed at 5am, somehow made it to the bus stop and before I knew it, I was back in crocs and blue PJ’s. We were assigned midwives to follow around for the day. My midwife was assigned to a lady who was waiting to go home with her newborn so I wasn’t in line to seeing a baby born. It was OK, this one was cute.

I also got caught by the matrons this day. I wear my hair in two plaits as with it being so thick, ponytails kill by the end of the day. Turns out this isn’t good enough and I had to do some inventive pinning techniques to pin the plaits off my neck. In the afternoon, I noticed one of the rooms was progressing in her labour so I asked the midwife if I could join her. I was with the mum and dad who were both so chilled out and she was even doing her make up whilst the contractions were happening! The wonders of epidurals are incredible.

It was 6pm by the time it came to push. The midwife included me in preparing for the birth and even got me my own surgical gloves out. I felt so included and important to the team. Soon the baby was making an appearance. I was helping and the midwife grabbed my hands and before I knew it I was supporting the babies head and helped the final few movements before passing baby to mum. I couldn’t believe it, I had just helped deliver a baby !

She was so cute and I even had to hold back a tear or two. I was so amazing to be that included and trusted enough. I also was doing odd jobs for the nurses that day such as doing obs because they were caught with another patients, doing bloods because they were snowed under and generally fetching things from around the ward. I had tried to get the bloods done as my mini-cex but despite normally being OK at taking bloods, I just could not find the vein and the doctor ended up having to step into help. Dam it. I’m going to have to get used to doing things under supervision.

Even though I came out of UH at 9pm (having started at 7pm) and ended up having to us hop home because I missed the last direct bus. I was beaming from each side of my face. I needed this day to remind me why I was putting myself through long days. Im going to finish this course even if it kills me 😀

Wednesday

GP day again. Had to drag myself out of bed with aching legs. I have hyper-extendable knees and I was feeling the stress I had put them through yesterday today. We had the morning off to work on our mini health needs assessment. We had made zero progress by the end of two hours ! We aren’t quite sure what we are meant to be doing and were struggling to pick a topic. In the end we decided to go with alcohol and leave it till next week to sort our project out. aaah procastination, I have missed you dearly.

In the GP session we decided to smash through our assessments. Each block we have to do a mini-cex (history taking, examination, taking bloods etc), Case Based Discussion (talking about a patient and their case) and a Warwick special OSLER (chatting about history, examination, working diagnosis and management plans) in GP and in Hospital leading to six sign off’s overall. We got through our mini-cex and CBD with two patients each. It felt slightly weird as we sat in the comfy seats in the office and I felt as if I was on a TV shown interviewing everyone. However, I got some good feedback, particularly with my patient relationships. Apparently I put people at ease, shame it doesn’t work on myself!

I also managed to handle an entire case by myself as a gent had come in with a chest infection and I did history, exam and treatment (even remembering correct meds as he was allergic to penicillin!). I felt so proud. Maybe, I am making progress!

In the evening I slumped back on my sofa at 6 and when I opened my eyes again it was 8pm, I don’t know how but I had managed 2 hours of sleep on the worlds most uncomfortable sofa. Luckily , I had a quiet day the next day so I could catch up on sleep then.

Thursday

Mostly a day off but I had a T-DOC (a type of mini assessment of our clinical skills). It was oxygen therapy, nebulizers and inhalers. Unfortunately, I had not managed to revise it at all as we couldn’t find the TDOC’s on our web pages. Turns out they were located under medicine block so I spent 15 minutes trying to cram as much info into my head as possible.

My oxygen therapy knowledge is awful but I am happy about the nebulizers and inhalers. Considering the session was two weeks ago and I had only been able to revise 15 minutes before. I was happy with how it went!

Friday

I think the tiredness from Tuesday is still hanging around and woke up dizzy and feeling sick. IT was annoying as I had a community midwife shift but despite waking up at 6am to get there for 8:30, I couldn’t stand up without feeling dizzy. I spent the day just trying to fix myself and catching up on work. I had my family coming up the next day so I was looking forward to them coming with my dog. I needed some bailey therapy.

Saturday

Here he is! My scruff mutt ! And my family of course.

We ended up wandering to Warwick and my mum and grandad were happy to see 1/8th of Warwick castle. At least they are easy to please! We went for food at my grandad’s favourite pub here and bailey took his seat at the top of the table. Where he belongs:

I feel sorry for my dog, he only ever seems to live in Pubs ! They ended up going home after and I was left to my own devices. I decided to give myself the rest of the day off and caught up on Ru Pauls drag race as the new series starts next week!

Sunday

I don’t normally write about Sunday but I got so much done! I hauled myself to the PG hub and finished the presentation list tasks for that week, emailed one of the new incoming newbies back and more importantly COMPLETED MY PLAN FOR SSC2.

I am so excited and it’s in an area I feel I am an expert in, social media. I emailed by supervisor as I have to submit the proposal next week so hopefully she gets back to me. I love it when I have days like this. I feel great when I get to the end of the week and it’s all completed !

Monday

Morning off today. Not that I did a huge amount with it. We had ABG training in the afternoon which I was looking forward to as we know the ins and outs of ABG’s including how to translate the results (in theory, in practise I’m still second guessing everything) so I was keen to get to grips with the practical side.

A helpful tip for the year below – DON’T WEAR WHITE OR LIGHT CLOTHING . The blood went everywhere. Jacob had the pleasure of fake blood down his light pink chinos whilst my kind clinical partner managed to get blood on his housemate who was stood the opposite side of the table from him. I’ve now seen a dark side to klaudio.

I headed back home after that night and tried to get an early night. I knew I had to be up at 5 the next day as I had my very first labour shift.

Tuesday

Here it was! My first day on labour ward. I was thankful it had arrived as it mean’t I was in scrubs all day which is like wearing PJ’s to work. I turned up at 7am, got changed and waited. Labour Ward means a lot fo waiting around. I was in Lucina that morning but the ward was eventually closed as there were no patients. The Lucina ward is a ward where low risk births happen. The rooms are beautiful with huge bathtubs, and ceilings with lights in them to simulate the nights sky. All I could keep thinking was how nice it would be to have a bubble bath in there.

I went onto Labour ward with the midwife I was shadowing in the Lucina ward. We ended up in a room with a mum in labour. There was also a student midwife in there. Labour ward is one of the wards where medical students aren’t really the priority in teaching terms. The student midwifes need to supervise births and catch babies for their degree requirements. We are the tourists of the labour ward. However, the lovely student in there took me through the CTG (the machine that produces the funny lines during labour) and how to interpret it. It took me a while but in the end I began to see the lines for the scribbles and slowly understood what was going on. The CTG shows the mothers contractions and the babys heart rate. You’re mainly looking at the heart rate of the baby when you’re monitoring the CTG looking at the rate, accelerations, decelerations and how they correlate with the contractions.

Eventually, mum gave birth to a beautiful baby boy and I was ecstatic, I had just seen my first birth. I stayed to see the newborn checks, see the measurements of the new baby and resist every inch of my fibres to pick him up and give him a cuddle.

I spent the rest of the afternoon doing odd jobs with the midwife. Taking blood, doings obs and even putting the CTG machine on ! I felt a complete part of the team which was great because it made the time fly by and I was enjoying my time of the ward. I left round about 5ish and headed home with a spring in my step. I was pretty exhausted as I had done 10 hours on my feet but felt pretty pleased with how the day had gone.

Wednesday

GP day! I love these days as we get to be as Independent as we can be at this stage and I found I just love talking to patients. I had a good mix of patients that day. Some pain presentations but we later found out they were a heavy drinker (time to deploy the intervention skills I had learnt via an e-module) and I wanted to check how they were doing so I advised them how to slowly decrease the alcohol levels and gave them a two week follow up. I also had a lovely human come with with suspected carpal tunnel. I did the two checks that are drilled into you in first year aaaannnddddd nothing. I asked them to describe the pain and it turned out it was more to do with the radial nerve rather than the median nerve which is normally affected in carpal tunnel. They had been referred to us as the consultants at the hospital as they thought they had carpal tunnel. Med Student 1, Consultants 0.

We also got to stay for the contraceptive clinic in the afternoon. It was interesting and I got to see a implant being put in and taken out. My eyes watered at how much the skin was stretched with the device but thankfully, the lady had been given local anaesthetic so apparently didn’t feel anything! I also got to see (a different one) being taken out as the woman was hoping to get pregnant. So, a nice happy end to the day!

Thursday

Sneaky day off today as the clinic we could go to only allowed one student in and the workshop in the afternoon was part 3/3 and I hadn’t been to the first two due to illness. I decided to catch up on work and go climbing as I hadn’t been since the week before and Im working to build my callouses up so I can climb for longer in less pain #priorities.

Friday

Academic day! I like these as I actually get to see everyone in my year and my friends who I actually begin to miss during the two weeks away. However, I spent more time running around campus than actually seeing others. In the hour we had for lunch I had to go and visit the doctors, return an Amazon package, meet my clinical personal tutor and have a meeting regarding my absences at the beginning of term. Safe to say lectures after were a working lunch. IT was paediatric week so we had lectures on child development with the person who happened to be the lead for paediatrics at UHCW. I managed to grab them at the end of the lecture to talk to them about catching up on the paediatric week I had missed due to the ear infection at the beginning of term. I’m planning on catching up in the last week as I have two weeks of peri-op and even Warwick agreed I can miss some of those to catch up on paediatrics. Turns out it won’t be a problem and I am going to email later on to arrange my visits.

End of the day I spent finally working on my home comforts project. I had ordered 45 new mugs to replace the ones that had gone missing from last term. I had to nail varnish these with WMS to try and stop people taking them away and then find some way to put all the blankets in the box. I lead a very exciting life.

Finally, I got to go home and basically collapse into bed. I had also realized this week that I have 14 more weeks till my glorious week off in May. I can not wait for the glorious dog walks I plan to take my scruff mutt on 🙂