Emma's Blog: Latest Posts

February 2007

The long awaited Christmas break arrived and swiftly left, marking a return to London from Yorkshire to start a new term.

2007 started with the Brain and Behaviour module, it was a very busy module, and I had accumulated a huge amount of information by the time we had the exam (which was after 5 weeks). A lot of the focus was on therapeutics, which was interesting, and I was familiar with a number of the products, and this made things a bit easier. The exam I am pleased to say was easier than anticipated, and I was somewhat relieved by the nature of the questions.

The planning for the 2007 Trauma Conference in August are now well in motion, I am at the moment finalising the content of the conference, in terms of the lectures and practical stations. In the coming weeks I will be returning to the Fire & Rescue training centre at Southwark to plans this year’s set of extrication demonstrations along with the fire service. I am hoping (along with everyone else on the team) that this year’s conference will be the most exciting yet, and will attract more people than in the previous years – we shall wait and see.

I moved flats a fortnight ago, so that took up a fair amount of my time, but I am now pleased to say that I am settled and very happy in my new home, which is out of the East End, and away from the patch I work on with the London Ambulance Service. This is my attempt to put more distance between my working life and home – I am not sure how successful this will prove to be as I seem to be spending increasing amounts of time in and around the Royal London Hospital, one can but try!

I am still attending the Neurosurgery outpatients clinics on a regular basis – I am grateful to the long-suffering Consultant whom shall remain nameless. The clinic is an interesting mix of patients with a range of different pathologies. Neurosurgery provides a challenging range of diseases from those affecting the spinal cord, to intrinsic tumours within the brain, to the trauma side of head injuries. This is good as it means that there is something for everyone within this exciting field. When flicking through textbooks my interest in trauma takes over and drags me to the chapters on head injuries, but the good thing about the clinic is the wide range of patients, and this makes me learn other important things as well. Neurosurgery at the moment is my only motivation for sitting down and opening an anatomy book, as every time I attend there is something new I learn and I regret not having a better anatomical knowledge. Interestingly I recently met a 5th year who is interested in Neurosurgery and was surprised to hear that I was sitting in on clinics despite only being a 2nd year, and that I had been doing this throughout last year. The individual concerned actually directly said that he thought it was weird, which initially frustrated me somewhat. However, after thinking this through I realised that I find it weird that people don’t want to utilise all of the opportunities available to them, and at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter. This also reaffirmed my understanding of the difference in attitudes between graduate versus non-graduate students studying medicine. The 5th year implied that I might want to spend my “free time” doing non-medical things or indeed sleeping! I very much have a 9-5 regimen in my mind and I will fill it with medical things, and where I have a gap in my timetable I will either be in clinic, or in the library or working from home. I have no doubt that this results from having a demanding full time job for a year before I started medical school. It would make quite an interesting survey to compare the time spent studying and the attitudes of graduates who had a job between degrees, graduates who started medicine without a gap, and undergraduates.

I have just finished a 2-week clinical placement with the respiratory paediatricians at The Royal London; I had an incredibly busy but enjoyable time. The team was happy to allow me to attend a range of ward rounds, clinics, theatre, and A&E, and I found myself in the hospital for 8am and not leaving until 8pm. It was well worth the effort, as I have gained a lot from the fortnight. Paediatrics is not something I feel naturally good at, and the reason I requested it as one of my chosen modules was partly due to this, and also because it adds some diversity to my studies. It is obviously important to do what I enjoy but sometimes I feel it is equally important to shift myself out of my comfort zone in order to discover a new interest. The placement was great for my revision of different clinical examinations, and provided a wealth of pathological signs and sounds. I am currently trying to figure out the best way to remember the sounds of different heart and lung problems that I heard. From an MDT perspective, Cystic Fibrosis is an excellent example. It is the special interest of the Consultant I was placed with, and I therefore had the opportunity to observe the team in action on several occasions. The team consisted of paediatric physiotherapists, paediatric dieticians, specialist nurses, play specialists, occupational therapists and doctors (of all grades). Microbiologists are also involved especially with identifying the specific type of infection a child has, and assessing which antibiotics (if appropriate) they are sensitive to. It was without doubt the best example of team input I have observed since starting medical school.

We have just started 5 weeks of Human Development, this is a module that I didn’t particularly enjoy in my first year (this may have been because it was only 3 weeks long, and it wasn’t really sufficient time to get into the subject), and so I am interested to see how this year goes. I am looking forward to entering the 3rd year, as the pressure in the second year seems to be relentless – module after module, exam after exam without much time to do anything else. My diary (and therefore my life outside medicine) seems to revolve around the 5 weekly exams we have and it will be much better next year when we have fewer exams and we can be in charge of organising our own time a bit more.

I haven’t been out and about with the London Ambulance Service for a few weeks now, and I have missed it, so I have arranged to go out this weekend. I need to spend a bit of time just reading up on some basic Emergency Medicine in preparation, but I am very much looking forward to it. I am also very much aware that my 2 week SSM in pre-hospital care is now firmly placed on the horizon (4 weeks away) and I am keen to prepare well for it, as I think that it is an amazing opportunity.

Next week I am making a very rare mid-term visit home (some of you maybe foolish enough to think that this is for a relaxing weekend with my family but you’d be very wrong). I have promised a day to a school in Kirklees (near where I grew up) to talk about medicine with a couple of my medic colleagues. I am intending to slip my passion for Emergency Medicine into this presentation and Barts City Lifesavers have kindly agreed to lend me one of their CPR training mannequins for a couple of days, so this should make life much easier.

Despite being busier than I have ever been, and sometimes bribing myself out of bed in the morning with the promise of an early night (even though I know this must be a lie as I have far too much to do) I am having an incredible time here at medical school, and there are still some days when I feel an absolute rush of excitement when I realise that I am exactly where I always hoped I would be.