Wannabe Medic

Student Finance have done the almightiest of fuck - ups. It turns out, they are saying I have a received a £2000 ish overpayment in the form of grant money. And to get it back? They are withdrawing my funding for the rest of the academic year. This has left me knee deep in shit basically. There isn't anything I can do about it either, from my research - every year, we sign a declaration confirming that if they overpay us we will return it. Happy Days eh? It's also been a week since the OSCE last Thursday. I celebrated the relief of it being all over and proceeded to be very very unsure about what to do with myself. I was so used to being in bed by 9pm and up a 6.30am that I couldn't snap out of the routine. It's not a bad routine, but it's certainly a little bit boring when you're saying good night to your mates on a Friday night at 2045 because everything in your body is telling you need to be up in 10 hours ready to chant those freakin examinations through...

So, i’ll do this the way i’ve always done it. Talk you through what I had and how I got on. Originally I tried to give myself a score out of 7, but quite frankly, that's too hard.  Station 1. Data interpretation 4/7  - a scraped pass. CXR + ABG.  ABG showed low oxygen, low carbon dioxide, but pH was was within normal range (7.37), HCO3- was in normal range, and so was base excess.  PMH: Asthma.  There was some consolidation in the lower right lung but as far as I could see the trachea wasn’t deviated - apparently it was!! The pneumothorax was pretty obvious. But I basically spoke for about 5 minutes straight chatting complete shit and making one diagnosis and then changing my mind to the point where all I really wanted to say was JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL. Station 2. History taking - Angina. Pass. So there was I was, revising away, thinking you know what - there is no way that they are going to give me the same station I had in my mock...

To give you an idea of what my weeks have looked like this is it. It's me getting up at 0630, run through all the possible examinations (e.g. Thyroid, Cardio, etc) and plan every single minute from then on until I go to bed at 9pm. You'll notice I take m y time at the gym and try to have a leisurely lunch to give myself a break from the onslaught of it all. + going to the gym wears me out so it takes a while to build back up again! Occasionally, e.g. Thursday = rest day, I give myself a few hours to do sweet f a. I really needed it too because I had hit such a strong mental block that a few hours to watch Gogglebox and have a couple of non-dietary-included biscuits was just what worked. When you plan your days like this, there is no level of spontaneity - when you call your mum, when you get your eyebrows done, when you eat and what you eat is all completely planned out. It just means thats a shitload less for me to worry about. I can't tell you how easy it would be t...

So at this point, I've been getting up at 0630 every day now. By some sort of miracle, i've learnt not to snooze on snooze on snooze, I actually... like, get up. It's very strange and satisfying. I get up at 0630, I work work work till about 6pm, but with at least 4-5 hours of that being made up with going to the gym and having snack breaks. Gotta get dat protein. I spend the first two hours just running through all of the examinations. Cardio, respiratory, peripheral vascular etc - all 7, and then I write down on my whiteboard what I missed from all of them and i'm like OK - can't miss that next time. Then I flick between doing history taking, explanations, etc using the pomodoro technique. I was recently given a list of the past stations - and I'm feeling a lot  more relaxed by it. I also feel a bit like a cheat. I am going through every single example station from previous years and making sure I can nail it, using flashcards and tings. There's a runn...

So as of this morning, i've got 10 days till my OSCE on Thursday. There is something about being filled with high panic and knowing i've got a lot of work to do for an exam, that kicks me into the land of crazy revision weirdness. The night before,  I try to plan my next day as clearly as I can with an hour-by-hour run down of everything I'm going to do. I use the pomodoro technique so have a timer on every minute I am working or not working. I get up at 0630 because I recently watched this ted tal k. I know I work better in the mornings and in the evening, I can't seem to function. So whether i'm sat in bed or asleep - it doesn't make a difference, i'm still not working. However, if I was to be sleeping, than I am getting some good quality rest in and I'll be able to rise earlier. That's a win. So, I go to bed no later than 10pm too. I schedule in some gym time as a priority. I stopped going for about 5 weeks over February and I began to feel re...

I almost failed this block. I've not seen my consultant lead since the day I met him - this, I now know, isn't uncommon. I also now know, he doesn't have a clue how to use the eforms app. He seemed to believe that the procedural skills was something that he needed to look at to decide whether or not we pass or fail the block. That's for the medical school, not you. Next he went through every single e-form. Now these past two weeks have been a real step back for me. I've not been attending the things timetabled, nor have I ever attended a clinic; this was because as we ran up to OSCE's I basically decided, ain't nobody got time for tha'. This decision was assured further when it became clear that my consultant doesn't run any Urology clinics. But essentially my summary for this block looked poor - and now I was about to be failed for it. Rightly? wrongly? - it's a bit annoying when there are some people people (boys, i'm looking at you) don...

[Sorry, I can't seem to correct the format of my last post so may be whip your binoculars out for a read!] This is my final week of my final placement for the year. My god  it has flown by. It's also 2 weeks until the real OSCE and that's what I'm gearing up for. Placement commitments have definitely taken a back seat as I spend every day trying to nail everything I can for OSCE's. Today I went over Cardio exam (which actually took a lot longer than I thought1). Murmurs seem to go straight  over my head too so that took some time. I looked at IBS explanation and treatment. I did a bit on history taking but was absolutely knackered by the afternoon. I practised a cardiology exam and thyroid exam on my friends after dinner too - and am getting a bit more confident that I should finish the exam within the pressured time but this is bearing on mind i'm practising on normal people! I also went back to the gym today for the first time in 5 weeks. God it felt goo...

So a few weeks ago, I had my sweat drenching formative OSCE. You can see how that went here.  Overall, I have gotten 64%.. Marking of the Year 3 OSCE's are as follows: I n order to pass the OSCE, students have to fulfil all of the following criteria: gain a mark of 57% or more overall have no more than 4 stations with a mark of less than 4 have no more than 2 stations with a mark of less than 3. Moroever: A grade of Satisfactory is equivalent to a score of 4/7 for 50% of the stations and a score of 5/7 for the other 50% of the stations (i.e. >64%) This would suggest, I have literally scraped through yet again, I have literally just met that criteria. The examiner marks you on various aspects of the station out of 5. This scale ranges from “uses no elements” to “uses all elements”.  You are then given an overall global mark which is the examiner’s expert judgement of your overall performance on the station. The global score is not simply derived ...

So that's my third week of Surgery done and yet, ironically, I have seen no surgery this week. I was meant to be driving up to Scotland with my friends (mid-week, brave, I know) but had to cancel last minute as it began to snow here. I didn't want to risk being stuck, but had already taken a morning off by that point. On Monday we had a clinical skills day at another DGH. We learnt how to catheterise a man, a woman, subcutaneous injections and intramuscular injections. The idea of this clinical skills day is to teach us how to do these basic skills nice and early, so that we can go onto the wards and practise them on real patients. What then, is the use of giving us this day in our penultimate week? I have no idea. I also don't know why they insist on sending us to an even further away DGH to do this but I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark here; money, resources, people. Tuesday, Clinical Debrief and Wednesday began the onslaught of trying to find people to ge...

The remainder of last week was fairly uneventful. I had work on Wednesday, went to see a nephrectomy on Thursday morning and left swiftly avoiding waiting for teaching I wasn't convinced was happening. Joke is on me though as it did happen and apparently it was very good. As the pressure gets higher to revise, the more disinterested I am in actually being present at some of the teaching sessions we're having. Last weeks case was CKD and while I'm sure the themed case discussion was very good, the lights were on but no-one was home for me. I then managed to somehow go out and socialise all weekend and do no work and then bang. It's Wednesday, I've got a million things to sign off and work to attend in the evening! This week is my penultimate week of placement and indeed my blocks. Surgery placement hasn't been particularly thrilling thus far, i've found most of the seniors very difficult to approach and they haven't seemed particularly welcoming. I do...