Wednesday, Thursday and Friday

My sincere apologies. I did mean to post my daily dairy at the end of each day this week, but the last few days have been so full that I’ve only got round to writing them up now. I may have forgotten a few details but I’ll still document the main points. This does serve as a useful demonstration of just how busy this term is though; at any given moment there are at least 5 things vying for my time and I never feel up to date with my uni work.

WEDNESDAY

7am – I wake up and get ready (smart clothes again as I’m in hospital for the morning)

8.30 – I get the bus to hospital and arrive at around 9.15

9.30 – My SSM in Diagnostic Imaging starts. I’m not sure about what to expect from this module, but the 2 people running it are really lovely, and a bit eccentric which makes it enjoyable. We start by having an overview of the basics of imaging techniques and then an introduction to the chest x-ray. I was worried that this module would be heavily physics focussed, but they only teach us the basics (which I can just about cope with) to give us an understanding of how the different imaging techniques work, and most of the information is clinically focussed. I learn a lot even in just these 2 intro sessions, and now feel as though I have a VERY basic grasp of what’s going on in a chest x-ray. The session also serves as anatomy revision, which is good for me as anatomy is definitely my weakest area.

11.00 – We split up into pairs. My surname is luckily next to my friend’s, so we’re paired together. Each pair gets allocated a different imaging speciality and is placed with a specialist clinician to be shown the equipment, and get an overview of what the speciality involves. My partner and I get put with a specialist in nuclear medicine who talks us through what nuclear medicine involves (mostly the diagnostics side) and then takes us around the department and shows us some of the fancy machines. I learn that some of the scanning techniques and images that you can get are far more advanced and impressive than I ever realised! It was a shame that we had our practical experience in nuclear medicine before we had the lecture on it, as I think I would have got even more out of it, but I still really enjoyed myself. I know that I don’t want to become a radiologist, but I still think it’s pretty fascinating, and the things that I’m learning will definitely benefit me in my future working life.

12.30 – We’re finished and I get the bus home. I’m meant to be in uni this afternoon, but towards the end of the morning I felt myself starting with a migraine, and I knew that I just needed to go home and sleep. When I get in I go straight to bed and sleep for a few hours and then feel much better. The afternoon lecture was for the module “Human Lifespan”, which isn’t really hardcore science, so it won’t be difficult for me to catch up. When I wake up I do some uni work for a bit (going over my respiratory anatomy notes) before my boyfriend comes home.

7.00 – We eat dinner of beef burritos and salad. I then want to go do some more work but my boyfriend pesters me until I agree to make a cake with him for a baking competition in his workplace. We make the cake (a butterscotch cake) and then watch some TV.

10.15 – I apply some strong cleaning product to our oven which still has burnt on grease all over it (from before we moved in) which I haven’t been able to remove from scrubbing. The cleaner needs to be left on overnight

10.30 – bedtime!

THURSDAY

8am – wake up. I’m not in uni this morning so I could have had a lie in (it was very tempting) but I needed to get up and do things.

9am – after breakfast and getting ready, I start by washing all the cleaning solution off the oven. The kit only supplied you with one pair of gloves to apply the solution (which I then threw away afterwards), so I now realise that I don’t have any gloves to wear to clean off the solution so I have to use my bare hands. This later results in all the skin peeling off my hands. The oven is very sparkly though and almost looks like new!

9.30 – I sit down and do a few hours of work – mostly going over lecture material and making notes and prepping for this afternoon’s session.

12.00 – I have an early “lunch” of cake as I realise that I don’t actually have any real lunch food in the house.

1.00 – Get the bus to uni

1.45 – Afternoon respiratory lectures. The lectures have a lot of physics and equations and histology, so they’re not the most fun. We then have groupwork going over some respiratory questions and case studies.

5.00 – Get the bus home. When I get in I sit down for half an hour and then put together some pasta with vegetables in a cream cheese sauce. I make enough so that there’s left-overs for myself and the boyfriend’s lunches tomorrow.

7.00 – After dinner I do some more work going over the respiratory we covered this afternoon whilst it’s still fresh in my head.

10.00 – I finish working for the evening and sit with the boyfriend and watch some tv for a bit before bed.

11.00 - bedtime

FRIDAY

6.45 – Wake up, eat breakfast and get ready

8.00 – I get the bus to uni

8.30 – I arrive at uni and do some reading in advance of our first lecture

9.00 – Our morning’s lectures/groupwork are on the urinary system. I don’t mind this module, but the material we cover this morning is pretty complicated and I’m feeling sleepy so in a break I grad a hazelnut latte to keep me going

12.30 – I eat lunch (leftover pasta) with some friends. I really should do some work in this time, but Friday’s are quite full on so instead I enjoy just relaxing and spending some time with friends.

1.45 – Our afternoon lectures/groupwork are on neurobiology. The brain is hard! There’s lots of anatomy in the first lecture which is complicated, but the second lecture is given by a clinician who pretty much just sums up some things and talks us through some case studies (with lots of pictures!) which is pretty interesting. The group work is very long and pretty hard, but it’s made better by the fact that 2 people from my group have brought in cake to keep us motivated!

5.00 – I finish uni for the day and walk quickly to the bus stop. I’m travelling (over an hour on public transport) to my boyfriend’s workplace to meet him there when he finishes work at 7pm. This involves getting a bus and 2 trains, and with Friday evening delays the journey takes a while and I only arrive just before 7. It’s also been raining heavily all evening and I’m wearing canvas shoes, so I’m soon soaked.

7.00 – I meet my boyfriend after work and walk to his car. We’re going home for the weekend as I’ve got a locum pharmacy shift back home and my boyfriend’s going to catch up with his family. I drive us home (a 2 and a half hour journey) as it’s good practice for me to drive long journeys as I only passed my driving test about 2 months ago. The journey involved lots of motorways, in the dark, in heavy rain, with lots of spray and busy traffic, so it was good practice of driving in adverse conditions!

9.50 – we arrive home at my house and catch up with my family over eating a late dinner (steak sandwiches).

10.45 – my boyfriend stays downstairs hanging out with my dad (I like that they get along well together) while I get my things ready for my shift tomorrow and then go to bed.

TUESDAY

6.15 – Another early start. I didn’t get the best night’s sleep due to my boyfriend waking me up at 4am and telling me that it was time to get up (I think he was still asleep at the time and dreaming), so I wake up in a bit of a grumpy mood.

6.20 – I shower, dress, eat breakfast and pack my bag for the day.

7.10 – I leave the house (late) and have to run for my bus. The bus driver kindly waits for me, which I appreciate as a lot of the time they don’t.

7.50 – I arrive at uni and make a quick cup of Earl Grey tea before the start of my lecture

8.00 – Lecture. Yup, I have a lecture at 8am. Thankfully this only occurs once a week, but we’ve had 8am lectures once a week every term since starting uni. Normally I really enjoy clinical skills lectures, but this week I wish I’d stayed in bed. The lecture’s supposed to be on MSK clinical skills, but the lecturer spent the whole lecture going through case studies of different MSK patients and didn’t actually teach us any MSK clinical skills. This happened last term also, so I still don’t have much idea how to do MSK examinations (eg. how to examine the hip, shoulder, back etc.). I hope our clinical skills tutors cover this in our hospital session next week, otherwise I’ll be clueless if these come up in our OSCEs.

9.00 – I eat the (home-made) brownie I packed for my lunch early to cheer myself up

9.15 – Our next 2 lectures start. This lecture’s on Pharmacology so I find this material pretty straightforward. It’s good revision though as a lot of this information I’ve not had to use since my Pharmacy degree. I use the lecture time to make really good Pharmacology revision notes on the material being covered (cardiology pharmacology).

11.15 – We then have small group work doing questions based on the pharmacology material we’ve just covered.

12.30 – Home time! I get this afternoon off as half the year has their hospital placements on Tuesday afternoons, but as I have mine on Monday morning, I get this time off. I walk to the bus stop and get the bus home.

1.30 – My boyfriend’s off work this afternoon too so we just do a few errands and I get a bit of work done – just writing up notes from last week’s lectures.

4.30 – I get an email from the medical school telling me that the special study module I chose to do (which ran on Thursday mornings) had been cancelled at the last minute (“due to unavoidable circumstances”) and that I’d been reallocated my third choice option of Diagnostic Imaging. I’m disappointed, but learning how to read x-rays and things will be pretty useful. The only thing is that Diagnostic Imaging is run on a Wednesday (tomorrow) morning at the local hospital, so I’m glad I checked my email when I did otherwise I would have missed the first session! I now have to figure out how I’m going to get to the hospital (a 1 and a half hour, 2 bus journey from my house) in time and then back to the med school for afternoon lectures.

6.30 – Have dinner of left over lasagne with salad.

7.00 – Do the washing up and sort things out for tomorrow.

8.00 – I watch the Great British Bake Off and then TheMidwives, both on BBC2.

10.00 – I get ready for bed and then go to sleep!

A week in the life of a second year med student - MONDAY

This week is my second week back as a second year! The first week back went really fast. It was good, but it looks as though there's going to be a LOT of work this term. I thought that I'd document a week in my life as a pre-clinical med student for anyone who's interested in what med school might be like and how much work is involved.

6.30 – I wake up, get breakfast, shower and get dressed. I’m in smart clothes today as I’m in the hospital seeing patients this morning. I also put together a quick lunch of leftovers as I'm not sure if I'm going to get an opportunity to buy lunch.

7.30 – I leave the house and walk to meet 2 friends. We then walk 20 minutes to the nearest bus stop that will take us to the hospital.

8.00 – We get on the bus and travel for 1 hour 20 mins in rush hour traffic to the hospital. Normally I’d get a lift to the hospital, which would decrease the travel time, but my friend’s car is in the garage getting fixed this week, so the bus it is.

9.30 – At the hospital. Our small groups spilt up and we sit with our clinical tutor and talk about what’s expected of us over this next term. We then go up to the ward to see a patient, take a history and do whatever examination is appropriate, as for this week there isn't one specific clinical examination we're focussing on.

10.30 – Our group went and talked to a young lady with Crohn’s disease who had come into hospital with bad colicky pain and other symptoms, and who was probably going to end up having an operation. I took the history, and it was really nice to be able to introduce myself as a second year medical student. Second year sounds so much better than first year! My partner then performed a general and abdominal examination. The patient was really co-operative and didn’t mind us practicing on her, even though the examination probably didn’t help her pain and she wasn’t benefitting from us seeing her at all. I’m really grateful when we get nice obliging patients like her! It’s so much better practice to take histories and do examinations on real patients, rather than on other med students.

12pm – We all go back to meet our clinical tutor and fed back about the cases that we’d seen before finishing.

12.30 – We luckily don’t have to wait long for a bus, and at midday it only takes us 1 hour to get back to the university. This gives me just enough time to quickly eat my lunch before my afternoon lecture!

1.45 – We have a lecture on medical law from a really engaging lecturer who used to be a barrister.

3.00 – We then have small groupwork which involves discussing some case studies involving ethical dilemmas with a clinical tutor.

4.00 – Another lecture, this time looking at ethics and consent

4.45 – Home time! I walk to the bus stop and get the bus home

5.30 – I arrive home and do a bit of housework, prepare dinner and quickly look over the lecture notes for tomorrow.

8.00 – My boyfriend gets home from work. He doesn’t work a 9-5 day, so sometimes he’s home early, but other times he doesn’t arrive home until later. He helps me finish making dinner (sausage, beans and mashed potato) and then we eat whilst watching a bit of TV.

9.30 – After cleaning up after dinner we just watch a bit more TV and faff around a bit. I get my notes and things ready for tomorrow and then get ready for bed.

10.30 – I go to bed. I normally go to bed at around 11pm, but after a busy weekend and an early start I’m tired and want to get a good night’s sleep before another early start tomorrow.

Tales from the pharmacy

These are several stories that happened to me whilst working recently which I thought I’d share (any identifying details of the patients below have been changed!).

• It was the middle of a busy shift when one of the healthcare counter staff came up to me and told me that there was a patient requesting to see me who was having an asthma attack. I went out to see her, and she was indeed having an asthma attack and at that point was really struggling to breathe. There are certain prescription medications that Pharmacists are allowed to give to patients in emergency situations without a prescription or the patient being known to the pharmacy, so I took the patient into the consultation room and gave her a salbutamol inhaler. After several puffs she started being able to breathe again, which I was very relieved about. I stayed with her to ensure she recovered fully, and after 5 minutes or so she’d recovered enough to be able to talk again. At that point she got pretty upset as I think the attack had given her a shock. I comforted her and stayed with her for a while until she felt ok to leave. She thanked me a lot and claimed that I’d saved her life (probably a slight exaggeration!), but it was nice to think that I’d made a difference in that women’s life that day.

• On another occasion, 2 sisters came into the pharmacy I was working at, both with prescriptions for the morning after pill. I asked them if they knew how to take it, and as they didn’t seem to know much about it, I took them into the consultation room to counsel them on it. I said that I could talk to them separately, but they were happy to come in together. As part of the counselling I always check how long ago the unprotected sex was to ensure that the patient is still eligible to take it, and to advise them on approximately how effective it will be. When I asked the question to these sisters, one of them said the early hours of the previous day and the other one nodded in agreement. I didn’t probe further but I couldn’t help thinking about what on earth had occurred? Had they both just happened to have had unprotected sex with different men at the same time, or had it occurred in some big orgy?! I’m glad I did talk to them though as the doctor didn’t seem to have told them anything about how to take it (or else they’d forgotten everything the doctor had said), and hopefully they’ll have good outcomes from it.

• Lastly, I was doing a medicines use review with a patient and talking to her about her medication. She had recently been prescribed a cream, so I asked her what she was using it for. It turned out that the patient is a naturist and was using the cream for a shaving rash “down below” from a recent naturist holiday! She didn’t need to tell me so many details surrounding the need for the cream, but it was interesting to hear about and the patient seem to mind telling me about it! 

Recently my locum agency wanted me to work 25 hours in one weekend at the end of September – a 8am to 11pm shift on Saturday and a 9am to 7pm shift on the Sunday. I agreed to work the Sunday shift but not the Saturday one. I know that in the future as a doctor I might have to work long hours, but as I currently have the liberty of refusing shifts, I’m taking full advantage. I just wouldn’t have felt confident in still being clinically safe to work after 15 straight hours, plus when I’m in uni full time Mon-Fri and have work to do outside of lectures, I need time off at some point! How much need though is there for a Pharmacy situated on the outskirts of a small town to be open until 11pm on a Saturday? It seems a bit pointless to me.