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 🙂
MedBeeMedic 