End of Paediatrics Block

This block seems to have gone so fast! The above year have had their finals exams and have just had their results back. In less than a year that will be me, a scary thought! A year feels like a long time but I know it will go quickly, and there’s so much to learn in that time.

I was pretty apprehensive of paeds at the beginning of the block as we haven’t done that much previously and ill kids are scary. I feel more confident with it now, but I still think ill kids are scary. They can be seemingly ok and then get really ill, really quickly.

I’ve learnt a lot and seen a lot of different presentations. The block was organised so that we spent time on the paediatric ward, SCBU (special care baby unit) and in a variety of clinics. We also had several evening on call shifts timetabled. These were actually really good as we got to go see patients in A&E and also be the first person to clerk in patients on the ward. I’m glad that I had this block now. Being winter the wards were fairly full most of the time with a lot of new admissions and referrals every day. I’ve heard that during the summer the ward can be pretty empty some days, so I’m glad I did get to have exposure to many different conditions.

Before the start of my clinical blocks I vowed to have all my notes for each speciality completed by the end of the block. GP was difficult as there were no pure GP learning objectives, and all of the objectives were covered in other specialities (eg. angina in cardio, fever in a child in paeds) so I just did as many as possible. This block however had a big list of paeds specific learning objectives and I’m really pleased that I’ve actually done work throughout the block and have my notes up to date. This will make revising closer to finals a lot easier, and doing the notes now makes more sense as it’s currently fresh in my head. I just need to actually print my notes now. I was holding out on this as the hospital I was based at for paeds gives us free printing in the student computer room, but annoyingly the printer has been broken for the whole block. I was hoping it would be fixed before I left the hospital but it wasn’t. This means that I’ll have to pay to print my notes in uni tomorrow as I currently don’t have any ink in my printer at home.

I’m going to a student GP conference tomorrow (Saturday). I kind of regret signing up to go now as I would really like that day off to relax/read up on O&G before starting my O&G block next week. But my friend is organising the conference so I said I’d go to increase the numbers, and there’s a free lunch which is one plus. O&G at the hospital I’m based at next is notoriously difficult and full on with a few mean consultants so I’m a bit nervous. I need to brush up on my O&G knowledge, especially anatomy so I don’t seem like an idiot and get off to a bad start with the consultants I’m assigned to.