My First Real Patient!

This week was the first of my clinical skills sessions in the hospital. Along with 3 other students, I’ve been assigned to a consultant who will act as our tutor for the rest of the term. I thought that the first week would just be induction – health and safety and what not, but after a brief induction and then an overview of general examination with my tutor, our group were taken to the ward! Only two of us were able to practice the examination on a patient, but as I ended up being stood closest to the first patient we went to, I got to have a go first! It was quite nerve wracking. The patient was this really sweet elderly lady who was still working, despite being nearly 20 years past retirement age! I’m fairly confident at carrying out a general examination on a stimulated patient, but doing it on a real patient was very different. First of all, she was sat in a chair next to her bed in a cramped space which made it a bit difficult, but she also seemed pretty frail so I was really cautious when doing things like palpating her lymph nodes, as I didn’t want to hurt her. The patient was really lovely and friendly which I appreciated. I think it’d be very difficult for medical students to learn if all patients were reluctant to have medical students practice on them. Being on the ward and talking to real patients made me feel a lot more like a medical student than I did last term.

Other than that, there’s not much to report. Our timetable is definitely busier this term, but I’m really enjoying most of the modules and I feel like I’m learning a lot. Like most people in the UK, we’ve had quite a bit of snow over the last week around here. On Friday we had lectures at the hospital all day and by the time we’d finished there was so much snow that the buses were cancelled which was a pain, but thankfully my boyfriend was able to come pick me up as it would have been a long walk otherwise!

The snow in my back garden! It got even thicker than this the next day as well! (photo taken by me)

Apparently we get our exam results back next week. I’m impatient for them, but also pretty nervous! (at first I spelt impatient as inpatient and couldn’t remember how it was actually meant to be spelt…)