Belated Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas y'all!

I hope that everyone's had a good Christmas :). I'm back at home for Christmas which has been really nice; seeing all my family and eating lots of nice food! I got many nice presents, and people seemed to like the presents that I gave them which was good.

My boyfriend got a 42" flat screen TV for Christmas which makes him very lucky, but also me very lucky as I'll get to use it in our flat!

I went Christmas sale shopping today. I was worried that all of the good stuff would have gone already, but I found many nice things to try on! I bought 2 nice dresses, one for New Year's Eve and one work dress, and a leather case for my iPhone. They were all really cheap too so I didn't feel guilty about spending money.

On the Pharmacy front, I finally passed my MUR accreditation, and have done my first Pharmacist locum shift! In fact I've now done 4 locum shifts, for which I've earnt over £600, not bad! My first locum shift was rather nerve wracking and I was thrown in at the deep end when after just arriving at the store I was given a pile of addict scripts to dispense and check, when I've never actually dealt with dispensing methadone and supervised consumption before, other than in role play situations at uni. I think I remembered all the theory from Medicines, Ethics and Practice and I think/hope that I did it all ok. My second locum shift on Christmas eve was a lot better, although very busy. I did manage to put my clinical knowledge into practice at one point by diagnosing a man with tremours and shaking as suffering from side effects of excessive use of his salbutamol inhaler and referred him to a doctor for better COPD control, which I felt good about.

At the beginning of my uni holidays I managed to get a lot of revision done, but since coming home the revision has taken a back seat to all the holiday festivities and visiting relatives/friends. I started to feel a bit guilty and stressed about my lack of revision and the upcoming exams though earlier today, so instead of going to the cinema with my Dad and sister tonight I'm staying in to revise hernias. My first exam is the OSCE which I'm not really worried about as I think that I'm quite good at this, but the written exams the week after are scaring me! It's really hard to know how much depth you need to know topics in. Several people have told me that it's impossible to learn everything and to just try to learn a few key points from every lecture, but doing this is really hard as I tend to worry about missing things out and end up writing up notes on everything which isn't really effective. I need to improve my Medicine revision skills. I guess that's what these formative exams are partly for though, to help give us an idea of how much depth to learn things and to test whether our learning and revision techniques are effective.

Anyway I should stop procrastinating and go back to my revision!

The cost of becoming a doctor

I read an article the other day which stated that it costs the taxpayer £250,000 to put a student through medical school (I can't find the link to the article now, but it was to do with the recent stories about Medical workforce planning and the talk of decreasing UK medical school places by 2%). This really shocked me! I knew that Medical school was expensive, but a quarter of a million pounds is a great deal of money. I mean, if I were to win that amount of money on the lottery I'd be incredibly happy. It also raised all my doubts about whether I'm good enough to be at med school and whether it was a fluke/they made a mistake in offering me a place. I don't feel worthy of that amount of money being spent on my education! It makes me feel pretty guilty, but it is also a good motivator to do some revision.

I then got to thinking about the total amount of money that's been spent on my education so far:

• Private secondary school fees (total 5 years): ~ £1050 (I was on a heavily subsidised scholarship)
• MPharm Pharmacy degree (4 years): taxpayer - £140,000, uni fees - ~ £13,000
• Pre-reg Pharmacy year (1 year): The training base received ~ £18,000 for having me
• MBChB Medicine degree (4 years): taxpayer - £250,000, uni fees - ~£18,750, NHS fee bursary ~£9750

Total: £450,550 (and this doesn't even count the cost to the tax payer of primary school and college, uni maintenance grants and the NHS living allowance bursary...)
                                                       
I feel pretty guilty about the £140,000 spent on training me to become qualified as a Pharmacist (not to mention the extra 4 years of me studying, and therefore not paying taxes) when I'm never going to be working in Pharmacy again once I'm qualified as a Doctor (hopefully). I suppose other people train as Pharmacists/Doctors etc. in the UK and then go and work abroad, at least I will be working for the NHS when I qualify, just not as a Pharmacist. It does put into perspective the recent rise in tuition fees and the arguements for making all Medicine courses Graduate Entry only. Other degrees don't cost anywhere near this amount, especially arts degrees, but I can kind of understand the government's decision to raise tuition fees when thinking about the cost of further education to the taxpayer, especially when seeing many of the people I went to uni with now working in jobs which don't require a degree, and which are totally unrelated to their degree course. At least when I graduate I'll be using the skills it cost the tax payer so much to teach me.

Maybe people would work harder at Medical school if they knew that £50,000 was being spent on them being there each year?

Monday, 3 December 2012

I'm in a grumpy mood today due to some personal circumstances I don't really want to go into and a few other factors. The flat's a bit of a mess and I think I've got a migraine starting. Over the past few years I've suffered quite a lot from migraines. A little while ago I started taking daily Propranolol to prevent them which has helped decrease the frequency and intensity of them, but I still seem to get them quite a bit which is really aggravating as when I get a proper one I'm debilitated for the rest of the day, and sometimes the next day too.

I'm currently trying to get my Medicines Use Review (MUR) accreditation which will make getting locum Pharmacist shifts a lot easier. No-one really hires a locum who's not MUR accreditated, hence why I've not done any locuming yet, but I'm so poor that I really need to. Anyway, the MUR accreditation that I'm doing consists of 4 online timed assessments, and today I failed the 3rd assessment for the second time. I wouldn't mind except that it was all clinical questions and I took all the answers directly from the BNF so I don't really know where I'm going wrong. Then they don't bother to tell you which questions you got wrong, or even how many you got wrong, so that you don't know which areas you need to go away and revise for, so passing the exam seems to be as much about luck as knowledge. There are loads of people online complaining about this MUR assessment as well, so it's not just me. The most annoying thing though is that if you fail one assessment you have to wait 6 days until you can sit it again so it's going to take forever before I complete it. Grrrrr. I don't want to get a part time job as I want to be free for locuming which pays nearly 4 times the hourly rate of a minimum wage job, but I'm so poor and have had to borrow money from my sister, so right now with a month off for Christmas I feel really guilty about not currently working. Additionally my bf has moved his job, still working for the same company but just a different location, but he doesn't like it anywhere near as much as where he previously was and seeing him going out to work every morning whilst I get to stay home makes me feel really guilty. When I start locuming we should be fine financially, but until then it's tough, especially with Christmas, which is why I really want to get my MUR accreditation :(.

Anyway, I'll try to write about some more cheerful things. A few of us had a nice end of term Christmas dinner the other day and I still had quite a bit of turkey left over, so today I made turkey vegetable soup which was nice :). I also really want to improve my sewing machine skills and re-learn how to knit and crochet this holiday. I got my sewing machine from my bf last Christmas but other than making a few fancy dress outfits, I've not really used it much. I'd like to learn how to make a patchwork quilt.

We found out the dates for our first OSCE's today. Mine's on January 2nd (scary!). This does mean that by having my exam on the first possible date I have extra days to revise for written exams the following week, but it will mean that I might have to spend New Year's Eve here alone if I can't get my boyfriend to drive me back to uni from home on New Year's Day :(. I think that I'm pretty good at the practical skills we've learnt so far, and I've booked an OSCE revision session with one of the third years this week, so hopefully the exam will go well, but we'll see. These exams after Christmas are the first proper exams of med school, so I really want to do well in them (even though they don't actually count towards anything), just to show that I am cut out to be here and cope with the work. Also, if you don't pass them, although there's no other repercussions, you do have to go before the Academic Progress Group which I really don't want to have to do!

I bought my bf a Lego Star Wars advent calender (the big child that he is) a few days ago, and he loves it, so I'm currently in the good gf books :). This is the first year I've not had an advent calender which makes me feel really grown up and sad. Normally my Mum sends me one in the post, but this year she's either forgotten or decided I'm too old for such things. You can never be too old for advent calenders!

Does anyone real actually read this blog btw? Blogger allows you to see how many people have viewed your page, and from what site they came to your blog from, but from the webpages given, I half think that the only people who view this page are spambots. I don't really need any readers as I'd still enjoy writing posts as a relaxing activity and to declutter my brain, but it'd be nice to know if anyone did read this!

Last week of term

Wednesday, 28 November 2012

This is my last week of term! It's gone so unbelievably fast - it seems like last week that I was just starting Med school. I've really enjoyed it, but I've also realised that there's a lot more stuff to learn as a Doctor than I previously (naively) believed.

Since the first week of term we've had it drilled into us that we need to work solidly throughout the term, and if we just cram for exams WE WILL FAIL. Although I have been doing this to a certain extent, I have by no means gone over and made revision notes for every lecture yet, as recommended. Luckily we have all of December off before our formative (don't count towards anything) exams so for these exams I should be fine with a month off to revise. However, for our summer exams (which do count; fail and you either get chucked out of med school or have to re-sit the year (SCARY)), we only get 2 weeks off beforehand. Plus, next term is reputably more intense, with harder modules and less free time. Therefore, next term I have to be a much better student and ensure I do each week's work as I go along. It's taken a while to settle into going back to uni after being out of uni for a year, and sorting out my new flat etc. but I think I am back into the swing of things now, so hopefully I'll be able to be a bit more organised and have dedicated revision timetabled each week.

I remember in the first week the head of the Med school telling us that's up until now we've likely been used to being top of our year/the best at what we're doing, but as everyone they've taken is of this calibre, that now in Med school, we can't all be the best and there will have to be some people at the bottom of the year. Considering that I only got a low 2.1 in my degree (the minimum grade to get onto this degree is a 2.1), purely looking at degree grades I'm already placed at the bottom of the year. I don't think that my degree grade is totally representative of my abilities as I had extenuating circumstances for one set of exams, and I just really wasn't that engaged in my degree and therefore I didn't work as hard as I should. Therefore I think that I can do well in Medicine, but I really have to buckle down and work hard. A realistic aim that I'm working towards is come in the top 4 deciles of our year.

The second years are currently revising for their big end of Phase 1 (pre-clinical) exams before moving into Phase 2 (clinical years), and they're all very stressed about this. The other day I also saw on the noticeboard the exams results for what I presume was the final year exam re-sits (although I was under the impression that you couldn't re-sit finals? Maybe they had extenuating circumstances or something), and 2 people had apparently failed these and had just been issued a Bachelors in Medicine, as opposed to the full MBChB degree you need to be a doctor. This is an extremely scary outcome, and one which I really don't want to happen to me. As graduates, we already have a Bachelors or higher degree, so to do 4 years of uni just to be issued another Bachelors would effectively be a waste of 4 years. I don't know what I'd do if that happened to me. The thought of this is enough to scare me into doing hard-core revision, and yesterday I went to the library to take out many (very heavy) textbooks to use for revision over the Christmas holiday.

I FINALLY got my Occupational Health blood results back yesterday. All of my friends who had their bloods taken on the same day as me got their results back weeks ago so I was starting to stress that one of my results was positive for something. I have no reason to think I have HIV, but I was really starting to get paranoid that I did and that I'd be chucked out of Med school! But they all came back negative, yay!

This week was our last presentation for our community placements. I used to be terrible at presentations - really nervous and losing the capabilities of speech, but after doing so many in my last degree I think I'm ok at them now. Our small group got really positive feedback which was gratifying as we did put a lot of work into it. The tutors also commended us on our positivity and professionalism throughout the placement, as they'd had a few issues with quite a few members of our larger group, and one of the tutors ended by saying that in after we're qualified, if she walked into a clinic and we were her doctor, she'd be very happy to have us treat her! This was really nice to hear.

This evening I'm hosting a Christmas dinner with some friends from uni which hopefully will be nice. I've never cooked a turkey before so I had to get some advice from my Mum over the phone, but hopefully it won't be dry and I won't give us food poisoning!

Gangnam Pharmacy Style

Saturday, 24 November 2012

This is a pretty funny parody. It's aimed at Pharmacists, but if you have enough medical knowledge to understand the drug references, you might enjoy it :)

http://iamapharmacist.com/ucsf-pharmacy-style-gangnam-style-parody/2012/10/25/

Career Choices

Sunday, 11 November 2012

I've been thinking about career choices a bit recently.

Firstly, whether I'm quite right in the head for even choosing to do Medicine in the first place. I love Medicine, but its reputation for being hard is true, and choosing this path means another 4 years of hard study, long hours, exam stress and being a poor student again. I have the option of working as a Pharmacist, what I'm qualified for, and seeing all my uni friends with impressive Pharmacist jobs, earning good money and being able to buy nice things/go on holiday/put a deposit on a house etc. does make me a bit jealous sometimes. I like money, I'm not going to lie. But despite all this, I try to remember that although it's hard work now, it'll be worth it in the end. Afterall, the career choice I make now is one I'm likely to be in for a good many years (35-40 years if I stay in Medicine until retirement). I'm pretty certain that I'll be far happier working as a Doctor than as a Pharmacist, and Doctors definately earn quite a bit more than Pharmacists. (In a 2011 table of average salaries, medical practitioner's salaries were 4th in the country (£69,952), whereas Pharmacist's were down at number 53 (£36,211)!). So even though it's hard work now, and I sometimes question my sanity, I just keep reminding myself that it'll be worth it in the end.

Secondly, even though I'm only in my first year I sometimes like to consider what speciality I might like to go into as I like thinking about it and it helps keep me motivated and to keep the light visable at the end of the tunnel. Recently we've also had to rank our top 3 specialities out of a list for a module where we get some time to go out to the hospital and do some patient case studies. This is likely to change as I gain more experience, but currently my top factors to take into consideration when looking at the different specialities are:

• An area I think I'll enjoy and will be able to feel like I'm making a difference in. For this reason I don't think I want to go into a speciality which deals with mostly chronic conditions.
• Variety and lots of patient contact.
• I'm going to be 30 when I finish F2 and will likely be thinking about having children, so an area which doesn't involve too many unsociable hours and is more suited for taking time out/ training part time if required for a while.
• Doesn't involve undertaking too much research to progress. (I understand the importance of research and I'd like to do a bit, but after my masters project and additional research projects at uni, I know that i) I'm not overly good at writing up research papers, and ii) I really don't enjoy doing it).

Baring these things in mind I've concluded that I don't think that I want to do Geriatrics, Oncology, Surgery or less patient based specialities such as Pathology and Radiology. This still leaves many specialities though! In the end I put down Obs and Gynae (I know this goes against the limited unsociable hours criteria but I think that I really like the idea of most other aspects of this speciality), Paediatrics and Dermatology.

I got linked to this BMA career psychometric test the other day:

http://bma.org.uk/developing-your-career/foundation-training/psychometric-test

You need a BMA number (student BMA number works) to do it, but it's quite interesting. I wouldn't say that I agree with the results and I think psychometric tests are only useful to a certain extent, but it was still fun to see what it said!

Talking of medical career choices, my Mum was updating me about 2 daughters of a family friend today. One of them did her F2 year abroad in New Zealand (apparently their training is very similar to ours so some UK Deanaries allow you to do this). Whilst she was there her husband, who works in finance, got a high paying job in Australia, and so, now that she's finished her F2 year, she's moving to Australia with him and taking a year out Medicine, and then I think they'll return back to England. The other daughter is currently doing her F2 year, after which, she's also taking a year out to pursue her hobby for a year! I wish I could take a year out to enjoy myself in Australia! It's nice to know that Medicine can be as flexible as this and that you do have options, should you want to use them.

In other news, my week's been pretty good. The course is going fine and I'm still enjoying it. We're mostly just learning the background science material this year though, and I think that I'll find the clinical years, where we're out learning in the hospitals, a lot more relevant, interesting and enjoyable. One thing that's really struck me about Medicine is the lack of coursework! My previous degree had loads of outside coursework, but here we get hardly any and most of our outside work is just extra reading, it feels strange!

Medical words I've discovered that I can't pronounce so far:

• Abdomen
• Obstretics

Interesting Medical Tidbits

Wednesday, 17 October 2012

1. Doctors always stand, and do consultations, on the patient's right hand side of the bed. I think is partly due to tradition and partly to give structure to examinations so you don't get mixed up from being on the other side of the body.

2. CPR compressions can be timed to the beat of PSY's song Gangnam Style!

A Bad Example

Monday, 8 October 2012

I ashamed to admit that not once in the last week have I remembered to take my morning tablet before 6PM.

I'm young (therefore my memory should still be intact!), only take one tablet a day and I'M A FULLY TRAINED PHARMACIST. If I can't manage to take one simple tablet correctly, how can I expect my patients, many of whom are old and have complicated medication regimes, to be concordant with their treatments??!!

Things that make me reconsider if I have the right aptitudes to be a doctor...

Monday, 8 October 2012

1. I realised today that I can't pronounce the word ABDOMEN...

2. This morning whilst making a cup of tea I managed to pour boiling hot water over my hand. Luckily it was my left hand and I'm right handed, but I still had to somehow stick my left hand out of the shower (it was too painful under the water) whilst washing my hair. Washing your hair one-handed is hard! I'm such an idiot at times!

Update

Saturday, 6 October 2012

I'm sorry for the lack of posts so far. I'm not planning for this to be a continuing trend though!

It's takes a while to settle down into a new place, especially in a new city which you don't know. I think I'm finally mostly settled in now though. I've still got some stuff to move here from home, but everything here is now sorted. I've unpacked everything, finally got internet(!), put pictures on the wall, sorted out my desk and got folders for all my different modules. The flat's in a really nice location which I'm enjoying. It's on a quiet road in a family/student area with a row of nice shops at the end of the road with everything I could want and a nice community library around the corner which is open 7 days a week!

So far the course is going well. It's not as intense as I was expecting (I think they're easing us in gently though, and next term is reputed to be a lot more full-on), especially coming from a full time demanding job with an extensive commute. The material that we're covering doesn't seem too difficult, it's more the amount of things we need to learn. It's a bit daunting thinking about all the information I'll need to know before finals!

In the first part of the course we mostly learn the essential medical sciences, which is obviously important but occasionally feels as though I'm just studying another science degree rather than Medicine. We do do some "proper doctor" stuff though which motivates me to work hard on the science aspects. This week we met our first patient in the community. We were looking more at the social aspects of their condition rather than the medical aspects, but it was still exciting! Additionally, I've also done courses learning the basics of venepuncture (taking blood) and suturing. These were really exciting things to do! For the suturing we practiced on a pig's leg, which started to smell bad by the end of the session and was slightly gross, but also really cool! I'd just presumed we'd be learning on bits of foam or a banana or something, but I think it was a lot more realistic learning on the pig's leg. Also these last few weeks I've learnt the techniques of taking a history from a patient and how to do a general examination of a patient (which was a lot more involved than I thought it'd be!). I think my favourite bit was reciting all the names of the lymph nodes in the neck whilst examining them on a classmate as this tied together the things we've been learning in anatomy and clinical skills really well.

This week we had "parent's meal" - this was where the second years we've had assigned to us as a buddy either cooked us a meal or took us out to a restaurant. My "parent" and her housemates had me and some of my classmates round to their house where they fed us home-made lasagne and scared us all with stories of second year! It was a really nice night though, and it was nice of them to go to so much effort to host such a lovely evening for us :).

I feel for all the people applying for Medicine with the UCAS application deadline coming up. I remember how intense and nerve racking the whole application process is. Next week I'm helping do mock interviews for students applying for Medicine as part of my uni's widening access to medicine scheme. I'm quite passionate about this as I know from experience that it can be hard applying for Medicine if you're from a working class background without parents/ friends of family who are doctors and not from a school with the resources of many private schools to help you get work experience and advise on personal statements, interview technique etc. I can't remember the exact figure, but only around 10% or medical students are from a working class background, which is pretty disproportionate!

Wednesday, 26 September 2012

 

I've been at uni for 3 weeks now! I'm sorry for the lack of posts. This isn't because I've been so busy (although I have been), but because since moving into my new flat 2 weeks ago we still don't have any internet. This is extremely irritating and makes doing uni work and catching up with tv programmes very difficult! Our internet was supposed to be being connected last Friday, but due to technical difficulties this was delayed. Then the internet was finally connected yesterday, only for it to not work (fault on the line or something) so who knows when I'll finally get internet. Very aggravating! I'm currently in the library and restricted on time, so

Apparently my time is up! I'll finish this post a different day

[Yeah, so I never got round to finishing this post... >_>]

First week as a MEDICAL STUDENT!

Saturday, 8 September 2012

Yay, I’m finally a medical student! After so many years working towards this, at the time seemingly unreachable, dream I’m finally here! It still feels a bit surreal.

I’ve just finished my first week. The first two days was mostly just induction, but then we were straight into proper lectures! I was hoping that this week was quite full on in order to scare us into doing lots of outside work for the term, but apparently the work just gets harder after this week :s. It wasn’t the complexity of the work this week that I’ve struggled with though, more just the quanity, so hopefully if I just get into a good work routine I’ll be able to keep up. One thing they’ve really emphasised (both staff and the second years) is that we need to be keeping on top of our work and reviewing it as we cover it, rather than leaving it to the last minute, or we WILL fail and die... I do understand the importance of this though and I have very good intentions to aim to review all my work and make revision notes weekly. This is a lot more full on than my last degree!

The University seems pretty good and all the staff so far have been lovely. They’ve all encouraged us to go to them if we ever need any extra help with anything. I also met my personal tutor who’s pretty eccentric but who also seems nice! The other students also seem nice and I’ve made friends with a few people. I wish I could have received a pound for every time I’ve asked/answered the four basic questions:

• What’s your name?
• What was your previous degree?
• Where did you study?
• Where are you from?

It would have been a lot easier if we’d just been given signs with this information on to wear around our necks for the week! It’s a good way to start a conversation with someone, but after finding out the same answers from so many people you start to forget most people’s answers and also who you’ve asked, but by then it’s too awkward to ask them again! There’s this one guy who I’ve hung out with a bit this week who told me his name on Monday, which I promptly forgot, so for the rest of the week I’ve just been avoiding using his name and saved his number on my phone as “boy who’s name I forgot”. Oops! I’ll have to resort to some sneaky tactics to rediscover it.

So far I’ve learnt how to take basic observations from people (temperature, respiratory rate, oxygen saturation etc.), including how to talk blood pressure the old fashioned way using a stethoscope(!), and also got to play/learn from models of the heart and abdomen. I’ve really enjoyed doing this, even though they’re pretty basic things, as I really like the hands on aspect of being a doctor and this makes me really feel that I’m a medical student, rather than just having lectures on the physiology basics etc.

I’ve attended the Medical Fresher’s Fayre and signed up for pretty much every charity and speciality society! I don’t know which speciality I want to persue yet (evidenced here), but joining all the speciality societies might help me decide, and they seem to put on interesting talks etc. I also know that I want to take part in something charity related, but I’m not sure what, so if I just go along to all the societies then I can decide which ones I like and then just go to those. Though looking at the workload it’s dubious if I’ll even have any free time left to attend any society events, and I’m only half-joking... There were also several businesses/organisations at the Fayre which were giving out freebies if you joined up! I love freebies so I was very happy. In total I got 2 textbooks, a laptop case, an iphone case, a tote bag, a magazine, a torch/bottle opener keyring, a pendrive, sweets, LOTS of pens, money off vouchers and one of those fuzzy ball things with googly eyes! For some reason I often prefer writing with promotional pens than with normal shop bought pens (my hand writing seems neater with them!) so I was very happy with the pens.

As can be imagined, there’s also been lots of social events organised this first week. I’ve attended nearly all of them, but I chose not to go to the 2 big drinking nights out. Don’t get me wrong, I like to have a drink and partied quite a lot in my undergraduate degree, but I chose not to go out as they didn’t start till late and we’ve had 9-5 lectures/ group work all this week. I’m trying to start this degree well and I didn’t feel that being tired and hungover would help me get to grips with all the material being covered in the lectures for each module (which was mostly the basic knowledge which will underpin the rest of the modules and therefore really important to have a good grasp on!). A lot of the people I’ve become friendly with so far also chose not to go out and people who did go said that I didn’t really miss out on much. Other people however, took the partying to extremes which resulted in people turning up late/not turning up at all for
lectures, leaving in the middle of lectures to vomit and not really doing anything in the group work. Considering that our attendance is registered and closely monitored I wouldn’t have personally felt comfortable missing lectures in our first week! One guy turned up looking a state, with big cuts all over his face and didn’t have any idea how he’d got them!

My boyfriend’s not been able to transfer his job here yet so we’re living apart at the moment. I feel a bit bad, but I’ve not missed him that much over the last week purely just because it’s been so busy that I’ve not really had time to miss him! I hope he manages to transfer his job soon though as I know I will really start to miss him if we’re apart for too long. We’ve lived together, spending all our free time together, for so long that it’s really weird to be apart for too long!

I’m currently staying in university temporary accommodation until I move into my flat next week. It’s very handy as the location is close to the med school, but I’m glad I won’t be here for the whole year. I dislike using the shared kitchen which is badly equipped, often dirty and with no free space in the fridge/freezer and the bathroom’s just really dirty and smelly! Maybe it’s because it’s a mixed sex bathroom, because I swear that when I was sharing with TEN girls in halls in the first year of my last degree that the bathroom was nowhere near as disgusting as this one is! It’s also incredibly noisy here, despite the hall being only about half full at the moment. The walls are so thin that all the door banging and people talking and listening to music (not even very loudly) is really disturbing.

On a more positive note, it’s such a nice day here today! I’m going to take a nice walk to the shop and the library to take advantage of the sun, and also to get some textbooks out in preparation for the coming week (trying to get into a good work ethic and all!).

I thought I'd end with this cartoon which I thought was pretty funny and probably pretty accurate!

Getting ready to move out

Monday, 20 August 2012

My week’s mostly been taken up with organising all my belonging and cleaning the flat in preparation for moving out this weekend. I’ve been trying to sort through my clothes and take some of the things I don’t really wear to the charity shop, but everything I come across makes me nostalgic and I end up not getting rid of much at all. Moving is such a hassle. It’s something I deeply despise. I look around the flat and it doesn’t appear as though we have that much stuff, but start to pack and your belongings seem to multiple by 10. Merg.

 

I got the induction week timetable for my first week of Medicine. It’s pretty full on, none of this Fresher’s Fayre, free time and partying malarkey of my first degree. We have all the introductory/induction stuff timetabled in for the first 2 days, but after that we have 9-5 physiology, anatomy and clinical skills lectures and group work timetabled in for the rest of the week! Though as I’m doing a Graduate four year degree, they need to fit in the extra year’s worth of teaching material in somewhere I suppose. There’s also a lot of partying and socialising organised for the first week by the Medical Society. On one hand I obviously want to go to these events to get to know other people in my year, but on the other hand I don’t want to be tired and hungover for our first lectures in all the modules as it doesn’t really give a good first impression. I guess I’ll just see how it all goes. I’m getting a bit nervous now. It’s nerve wracking being faced with a new cohort of strangers where I don’t know anyone, and I hope that I can keep up with the work and will be happy living in a new area.

 

This last month’s gone so fast, I’ll be starting Medicine in less than two weeks now! After so long working towards this point, all the stress of completing my first degree, pre-reg year and university applications, its sure come around fast! I really hope I actually enjoy Medicine and have made the right decision.

Medicine in the Media

Sunday, 12 August 2012

My week has been pretty non-eventful. I've mostly just been trying to plough my way through my never-ending "To Do" list. There are so many things I need to sort out before I start med school - CRB form, completing my Hepititis B vaccinations (and convincing my GP surgery not to charge me for them!), sorting out all the documents the estate agents need before moving into my new flat, sorting out temporary accommodation for 2 weeks before I can move into my flat, negotiating with the bank to convince them to let me keep my student bank account (and associated overdraft..), trying to get the correct amount of student finance (graduate entry medicine confuses them), fitness to practice forms, occupational health forms, a list of what vaccinations I've had from my GP, organising to move out of my current flat and signing up to Pharmacy locuming organisations so that I can hopefully work when I start med school. Additionally we've also been given some reading to do in preparation before we start the course. It's a good job I've got a few weeks off before starting uni as otherwise I don't know how I'd get all this stuff sorted, especially as a lot of the things can only be done during working hours.

Yesterday I watched an Horizon programmer called "The Truth About Looking Young" (available on BBC iplayer) which was presented by Dr Rozina Ali, a plastic surgeon. This was quite an interesting programme looking at recent research into keeping skin looking young without surgery. As it was a programme looking at non-surgical options and didn't reference surgery once, I don't really know why they got a plastic surgeon to present the show, other than to give the programme credibility by being presented by a doctor. The presenter also annoyed me at times as she came across as very vain and was reluctant to have any of the tests performed on her own skin as it meant she had to take her make-up off, but admittedly she did have very good skin for her age (mid 40's).

The most interesting bit of the programme I found, was when they were talking about how certain anti-oxidants from different foods have the capability of reducing skin aging by increasing collagen synthesis. Apparently the best foods to eat are bright fruit and vegetables, especially tomatoes and broccoli, and oily fish, although in a normal diet we don't eat enough of these foods to make a big difference. Unilever however, have manufactured a pill containing concentrated amounts of these anti-oxidants (vitamins C and E plus isoflavones from soya, lycopene from tomatoes and omega-3 polyunsaturated acids from fish oil) which was shown in a trial to be effective in reducing wrinkles. You can read more about it in this New Scientist article. Reading about this also reminded me about some information I read a while ago about how there's some evidence that fish oils, particularly Omega 3, can help reduce schizophrenia symptoms, and when I did a week long Pharmacy placement at a psychiatric hospital, a lot of the patients with schizophrenia were prescribed fish oil capsules. It's amazing how different foods can have such an effect on our health!

I'm getting a bit bored not working now (even with my massive to-do list). I've been doing quite a bit of cooking/baking though to pass the time. I enjoy cooking, but sometimes it's hard to fit in the time to do it around work so it's nice to be able to take my time and enjoy doing it. Last night I made a random (consisting of whatever I found in the fridge) sausage casserole. It was very tasty! Here's a picture of it:

(photo taken by me)

I went to the dentist yesterday. The dentist I saw was quite young, but she was really nice and despite her appointment listing running late, she took the time to properly examine my teeth, x-ray them to check for any decay (none thankfully!) and give them a good scale and polish. Other dentists I've been to in the past have just given my teeth a quick glance and didn't bother scaling/polishing etc. If I were to become a GP, this is the type of approach I'd like to have for my consultations, even if I was running behind schedule.

It's nice weather wise at the moment. I was going to go out for a walk in the countryside yesterday with the BF, but at the last minute the BF got a message from his brother, who was in London for the day, inviting him to go and spend the day with him. The BF hasn't seen his brother in a while so of course he went, but I was a bit disappointed that our day out got cancelled. Hopefully we'll go out one day this week instead and the weather stays nice!

A Guide To Applying For Graduate Entry Medicine Part 1: An Overview

Wednesday, 8 August 2012

I’ll start off by saying that I’m in no way an expert in applying for Medicine. What I’m writing and the advice that I’m giving is purely based on my own experiences, and therefore I can’t guarantee that what I’ve written is 100% correct. I know though, that when first looking at applying for medicine there’s a lot of information to research and things to consider and it can be a bit daunting , so having researched applying to Medicine as a graduate for several years, gone to open days, ordered and read all of the prospectus’s, bought and read “applying for medicine” books and spoken to current med students I thought that I could share what I’ve learnt from the experience which will hopefully be helpful to some people J.

 

As a graduate you have 2 main options when applying to study medicine after already having completed a degree: Graduate entry courses (4 years) or applying to Undergraduate courses as a graduate (5 year courses). The 4 year graduate entry courses tend to be more competitive than undergraduate courses, but as well as being an extra year longer, undergraduate courses cost a lot more to do (I’ll do a detailed separate guide on the financial side of things shortly). Most people, due to the extra competitive nature of graduate entry medical courses apply for a mixture of graduate entry and undergraduate courses.

The structure of the medicine course tends to be: the first few years are more academic, going over the theory of medicine with the later years being more hands on patient contact where you’ll have rotations in different medical areas in hospitals practicing the skills you’ve learnt. Depending on the university, you might have some patient contact from the start of the course. There are 2 main teaching styles at Medical school – problem based learning (learning by working through case studies in a group with your peers and an academic facilitator) and traditional (lecture based with some group work), or a mixture of the two. Neither style is better, it’s just what suits your way of learning best.

 

UCAS

You have to apply to study Medicine through UCAS. It’s a long online form requiring basic information about yourself and your qualifications plus a personal statement and an academic reference. The personal statement is where you have to write approximately 1 page detailing why you want to study medicine, what qualities make you suited for medicine, your work experience and any extra-cirriculars which you do. The academic reference is ideally written by your university personal tutor. They’ll get given login details to input their reference onto UCAS themselves and you don’t get to see it. The closing date for applications to study medicine is October 15^th. Normally you can apply for a maximum of 5 courses when applying through UCAS, but for medicine you can only apply for a maximum of 4 medicine courses (whether they’re graduate entry, undergraduate entry or a mixture of the two). If you apply for more than 4 medicine courses than your application won’t be valid, so don’t do that! If you wish to you can apply for a 5^th alternative degree (ie. a degree which isn’t medicine (or dentristry or vetinary science)). As a graduate though I don’t know why you’d do that as you already have a degree so doing another non-medicine degree seems a bit pointless. There’s a £23 administration fee to apply for courses starting in Autumn 2013.

 

Entry Requirements

• Academic requirements generally universities require a 2.1 degree or higher. There are some exceptions to this; a few of the universities accept a 2.2 under some circumstances or with a good GAMSAT score, and a minority of universities ask for a 1^st or a good 2.1 (over 65%). Some universities also take into account A Level and GCSE grades, but most universities don’t even look at them and just use your degree as evidence of academic capability.

• Work experience as a general rule I would recommend that people have work experience that shows that you have knowledge of the everyday work of a doctor (Eg. shadowing etc.) and some experience of hands on work in caring role (Eg. voluntary work in a hospice or at a nursing home or as a healthcare assistant etc.). Voluntary and paid work experience are both valid. I would also recommend that you have at least one example of experience (preferably hands on experience) which you’ve done over a longer period of time to show dedication. This doesn’t have to be full time experience, it can be as little as an hour or two a week over several months.

• Extra-curriculars it’s also good to have some hobbies or extra-curricular activities outside of medicine to talk about in your personal statement to show that you’re a well rounded person. Social activities such as sport or being part of a university society are generally better than saying you like reading, for example.

• Entrance exams the majority of graduate entry medicine courses, and undergraduate courses open to graduates, require you to sit the UKCAT exam. Some universities require you to sit the GAMSAT exam instead of the UKCAT, and Oxford and Cambridge require you to sit the BMAT exam. (There’s quite a lot to write about the different exams so I’ll write about them all in more detail in a separate guide shortly.)

Where to find out more information

• University websites and prospectus’s normally have all the entry requirements for the individual university courses and are a good starting point.

• It might be a good idea to try to go to the open days of the universities you’re most interested in where you can tour the university facilities and ask any questions.

• The website newmediamedicine has some really good forums where you can discuss applications and different universities etc. with other applicants and current medical students.

• There are various books available giving detailed information about applying for medical school. Most of them are aimed at undergraduate students, but most of the information in them is still relevant anyway. One book which I would recommend is “Getting Into Medical School 2013 Entry” by MPW. Some of the information is quite basic, but it covers all of the important areas and a new edition is brought out each year so it’s up to date which is important as things such as entry requirements for medicine change from year to year. Additionally, in the 2012 version which I read, there were tables for the previous year detailling the number of applicants per university, the number interviewed and the number which were successful which I found really useful in working out which universities were more competitive than others.

Overall, the main things that I would recommend for people to be working on for Autumn 2013 entry (the application deadline for which is October 15^th 2012) now would be: research which entrance exams you want to sit and book them, if you’ve not done so already organise work experience and research what the requirements are for the individual universities that you’re interested in.

As you can see from the length of this(!), there’s a lot to consider when applying for Medicine, but hopefully I’ve covered most of the basics. It’s hard to think of everything people might want to know though, so if anyone has any questions please feel free to comment and I’ll do my best to answer J. In the next few weeks I’m planning on doing a few more in depth guides which will hopefully cover the different universities and their requirements, entrance examinations, work experience and a financial guide.

[EDIT: This post took ages to write and seeing as I didn't seem to have many/any readers I didn't bother writing any other guides. Maybe I'll revive this before the next application cycle]

I passed the exam!

Thursday, 2 August 2012

So, I passed the pharmacy pre-registration exam! This now means that I'm a Pharmacist! I was so nervous on the day of the results, and had to read the list of names of people who'd passed before I fully believed that I'd passed! The results day was also my last day at work. It was sad to say goodbye to everyone who'd helped train us and support us over the last year. It's weird knowing that you're probably never going to see most of the people ever again after spending every single day with them for a year. My pre-reg tutor was really nice and gave me this beautiful necklace and bracelet which her Aunt had made as a leaving present, which made the John Lewis gift vouchers I gave her look rubbish in comparison!

Now that I've finished work, I've got a month off before I start med school in September. I can't work as a Pharmacist until I'm fully registered with the Pharmacy board which won't be until the beginning of September, so other than a big to do list (including many forms to send off for med school!) I don't really have anything to do. The most exciting thing I've got to do today is to go out to buy a new toothbrush and mouthwash! I'm enjoying being so free at the moment, but I think that before long I'll get a bit bored. I'm the type of person who doesn't like sitting around, I like keeping busy and being productive! I'll probably try to do some reading before I start med school and do lots of baking.

Yesterday my boyfriend and I went flat hunting in the area by the med school where we'll be moving to. After nearly agreeing to rent this one flat which we found out just in time (we were about to put a deposit down on it) from 2 friendly police officers that it was in a horrendous area which they recommended we avoid at all cost, we found this nice little flat in a good area close to the med school. We both really like it, so we're just waiting for our credit check and references to clear before it's guaranteed as ours! Even though I have no reason to think that the credit check or references won't come back ok, I'm still really nervous about it! I feel really bad that I'm uprooting myself and boyfriend from the really nice flat we're in currently to move to a new (not terribly nice) city, where we don't know anyone, so I just hope we do manage to get this nice (cheaper) flat to try to make it more bearable. The only minor problem with the flat is that there's about a 2 week period between when we move out of this flat, before we can move into our new flat, during which we'll have to stay with a friend and I might have to commute nearly 4 hours a day for my first week of med school which will be really inconvenient. My boyfriend should be able transfer his job to somewhere close to where we'll be living, but there's a chance that this might not happen until a while after I start med school, so we might have to live apart for a while which will be horrible.

On a different note, being at home all day is allowing me to watch lots of the Olympics! Before the Olympics I wasn't overly excited for it, but I'm getting pretty into it now! I especially like the gymnastics - I really wish I could do half of what they do! When I was in London the other day I was stood next to someone on the tube who's badge told me they were an athlete from Hong Kong. I have no idea what sport they were competing in, but I was pretty star struck anyway!

I also thought that I'd share the list of things that I'm currently lusting after. I know that I can't afford (and won't be able to for many years) most of the things on this list (unless I win the lottery! ^_^) but there's no harm in looking!:

Bags:
I need a new bag for when I start uni

~ The Mulberry Bayswater handbag - totally out of my price range, but so pretty and a perfect size for uni!

~ Longchamps Pilage tote bag - more affordable and also a perfect size for uni for carrying work in. I think I've decided I like this colour best (as it will best match the clothes I frequently wear), but for a while I was toying with the idea of the black and the navy blue versions.

~ 13 inch Macbook Air. I need a new laptop (my current one is nearing the end of it's life :( ) and I've fallen in love with this one. I really like Apple laptops as they just work, are reliable and should last me a good few years. I want the Air as I'd be able to take it to uni with me easily, and the 13 inch as I don't want a too small screen.

~ The Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine, AKA the medical bible! I have a few medical books already, but I think this one's essential. I'm probably going to wait and ask for this for my birthday (in October).

~ Littman stethoscope. Again, a medical student essential! I'm really excited to get a stethoscope - I think I'll feel like a proper med student then! I'm waiting until I start med school before I get one as it's my understanding that they'll give us advice about which is the best make to get. I've been thinking about what colour to get though. I really like the raspberry colour in the picture above, but I'm worried it'll clash with my hair. Hmmmm

Old life ending

Thursday, 26 July 2012

My second post! I'm not posting regularly yet as I don't begin med school until September and I don't really have much of interest to talk about at the moment.

I finish my current job tomorrow. I also get my exam results tomorrow (scary!). If I pass them it means that once I've sent off the paperwork I'll be a fully qualified Pharmacist! If I do pass (the exam's just pass/fail) it'll mean that I'll be able to work as a locum Pharmacist at the weekends/holidays whilst at med school which, seeing as I don't have any money, is kind of a necessity. If I don't pass though it's not the end of the world, just inconvienient, as I'll be able to re-take the exam in Septemeber. Some of the other trainee Pharmacists I'm working with have Pharmacist jobs due to begin in the next few weeks so they're a lot more nervous about the exam results than I am. I do hope I pass though, it's not nice to fail at things. Also, the results come out at midday (online so that everyone in the department can see them!) so if I don't pass everyone will know and I'll have to stay at work for the rest of the day which would be so humiliating.

Even though I'm not at med school yet, working on the wards in hospital I still get to see a lot of interesting and vaguely medical related things, so I thought I'd just write about a couple of interesting things I've seen so far:

~ Occasionally we actually get patients come into hospital with classic textbook drug interactions/ side effects. Most of the time patients aren't very straightforward and don't behave in the way textbooks say they should, so when a patient is very textbook it's a good learning opportunity. One such patient was an elderly woman on warfarin (blood thinning drug) who had been prescribed a week long course of metronidazole (an antibiotic). Textbooks tell you that metronidazole increases the antiplatlet effects of warfarin, and low and behold the patient presented into hospital with uncontrolled bleeding and a really high INR (a measure of how thin your blood is). I think the GP was aware of this interaction as he/she had made a note to take the patient's INR level a week after they'd started on the metronidazole, but maybe they weren't aware of how serious the interaction can be as they shouldn't have really left checking the INR for a week. Thankfully the patient got given some Vitamin K to reverse the effect of the Warfarin and is doing fine now.

~ An example of the type of doctor I don't want to be like: I was on the ward working on one of the portable ward computers. One of the consultants, with a team of mini doctors (students/F1's) strode onto the ward, and being the nearest computer to him, the consultant came up and stood next to me and loudly cleared his throat. I looked up at him and the consultant (obviously aggregated that I hadn't automatically jumped off the computer for him) snarled "I need the computer". Fortunately I was on one of the specific Pharmacy computers so I was able to just show him it was a Pharmacy computer and go back on with my work, and he flounced away. Though, even if I was just using one of the generic ward computers I probably wouldn't have given it up to him (obviously if it was an emergency I would have given up my computer in a heartbeat). Now, I understand that doctors/consultants are busy people, but in this case there was actually free computers not far away, clearly visable, a little further down the ward, and even if he is busy there's no excuse for rudeness and lack of manners. If he'd come up to me and said something like "Excuse me, would you mind if I used your computer for a ward round?" I would have gladly given it up, but the arrogant, rude way in which he just demanded the computer really rubbed me up the wrong way!

~ A patient who thought smoking was beneficial to health after badly explained stats: I was talking to a patient about smoking and he was talking about how he'd read on a heart disease leaflet a statistic along the lines of (can't remember the exact stat) 30% of smokers get heart disease, which the patient took to believe that as only 30% of smokers get heart disease and a large proportion of the country has heart disease, smoking must mean that you have a reduced chance of getting heart disease. As someone who's used to dealing with statistics it's easy to forget that other people aren't so familiar with, what to myself, are everyday terms. This was a good remainder of the importance of good explanation, pitching things at an appropriate level for patients and of ensuring patients understand what you've told them properly, things which I shall try to remember when at med school and working as a doctor.

~ I was working on the ward when an elderly patient who had half an hour previously been up and talking, suddenly crashed (their heart stopped beating). The doctors and nurses were all amazing, reacting really fast, but unfortunately the patient died. As the ward where I was working was quite open and where I was working was close to the patient's bed, I saw and heard a lot of the resusitation efforts. I found this quite upsetting and I was a bit emotional, even though I hadn't known the patient. As a med student and as a doctor I know that I will experience things like this quite a lot. I do tend to get emotional/upset about some things quite easily, so I know that I'm going to have to toughen up before I become a doctor.

I know that Pharmacy is very different to Medicine and obviously I have a lot to learn, but hopefully having worked as a Pre-reg Pharmacist on the wards alongside the doctors/ other healthcare professionals will give me a good grounding for med school. From my degree and reading patient's medical notes everyday I feel that I know the basics of common conditions (pathology, diagnosis, treatment etc), know quite a lot about drug treatments for conditions and drugs in general, and just things like knowing medical abbreviations, how wards work and I'm used to talking to patients and other healthcare professionals. Hopefully these things will help me at med school!

First post!

[EDIT: I used to have a different blog, but I messed up the login details and as I didn't really like its name or layout, I decided just to start over again. But, I'm just copying all the old posts over to here which is why the date on the top of the post won't match the published date.]

Tuesday, 27 March 2012

Hi!

This is my blog which I've started to document my journey through medical school. I've not actually started med school yet, but after going through the rather stressful application procedure I have now secured myself a place at med school (unconditional, yay!). I won't say which medical school I'm going to to try to maintain some semblance of confidentiality, but I will say that it's a 4 year graduate programme :).

I'm currently working in the NHS, but soon I shall finish my job, move to an alien part of the country and start med school. This is extremely exciting, but at the same time extremely scary. Will I like the university? Will I be able to afford to live? Am I cut out for medicine? Going into a graduate programme I will be with other graduates, all with a variety of experiences, all of whom I'm sure are vastly more brainy than I am. Will I be able to keep up with them and the intense workload?

I'm also going to be leaving all my close friends behind, with only my bf for company. Will I make good new friends at med school? Sometimes I can be shy and a bit of a social klutz, so who would want to befriend me when there will be (I'm sure) such an array of other more talented, good looking, eloquent, and as I've already said, more brainy people on offer! I'm sure to need good med friends to help me get through what is renowned as 4 years of intense, difficult, trying times.

Despite all these worries though, I'm also really really naively excited! Enough to bounce up and down whenever I think about it (if no-one's watching..). I'm excited about learning complex physiology and anatomy, about learning clinical skills, about making prettily coloured flash cards, and about getting a stethoscope and wearing scrubs! I'm already researching online about possibilities for my elective abroad. I'm sure when I start the reality won't be anything like my expectations, but hopefully I'll still love it none the less!

I have to go now as I'm working a late. Oh well, if it's busy at least I've got the thought of med school to get me through! (I'm such a nerd)

 

xx