Medicine Week 7

Monday

Busy day. Went into hospital for our ward time. We moved wards away from a Gastro Ward over to a … Gastro ward? We are meant to switch but I suppose the demand for GI patients was too high. It feels different here as it was a bigger ward so we were more restriced with what we could do and it was incredibly busy so it was a different learning experience to what we had on our previous ward. With the doctors being so busy, theres less chance for you to get involved so you had to jump in where you could. I enjoyed it though as I had enough of looking at stomachs so it was nice to examine some lungs, even if it was only one pair of lungs.

In the afternoon I had my OSLER sign off. I had to get two done this block to make up for missing my one in specialty. I had a brilliant Dr who we had for the ALERT course. We headed over to CCU (cardiac) which meant I had a cardiac patient. Great. The heart is cool but honestly, it’s my worst part of Medicine. As a die hard Neuro, the only action potential in my brain is the Neuro one and no other action potential will ever fit in my head. I also get confused quickly on where my stethoscope has to go and for the life of me I just was not hearing anything that resembled a heart beat. I tried my steth back at home to tripple check it was me and not the equipment and yup – there was my heart beart, me then.

I also was a nervous wreck (suprise suprise) and mucked up the exam. I had two minutes left by the time I actually performed the focus part of the examination. Gulp.

As stumbly as I was, I got some great feedback and we sat for a while after chatting about academic medicine. I am becoming really interested in persuing a career in Medical Education and it’s my dream to teach one day. I have my basal ganglia teaching nailed.

Tuesday

Weird morning standing there with fake vaginas and penises today. Catheter taching ! I had always been intrugued by these as I keep mixing them up with cannulas confusing both myself and everyone around me. We had to learn both male and female anatomy and how to insert it into both sexes.

I was better at the female and left my clinical partner wincing whilst I was inserting the male one. We also did preganacy tests on some pre-made urine and dipped some urine with dipsticks. All the sterile field and steps do get confusing but that last thing anyone needs is to get a UTI with one of these in so you do have to be careful.

In the afternoon I had training for my first job in Medical School ! I’ve relied so far on my over draft which has caused stress, but now I am earning, I feel a lot better. We can even do our work whilst we are working which is great instead of just staring at a blank wall.

My distinctive dress sense was also picked up on by the staff, well, if I can match my mask to my outfit, of course that is what I am going to do!