Being thrown to the Lions

Hmmmmm. Medicine is very different to nursing. I never expected to say this, but the doctors could learn a hell of a lot from nurses on how to train someone to do a job.

Example 1. By Thursday I think the three of us (My clinical partner, German playmate and me) were the ward sport (We imagined them taking bets in the sluice of how quick they could make us crumble)

Halfway through the morning, one of the SHOs told us to "Sort the bloods out" Wanting to look eager, and terrified of upsetting them anymore than we had already done, I said "But we have never taken any bloods"

"Then this is the ideal time to learn then, isn't it" She snarled back. Oh shit - I did a venepuncture course two years ago (It was during the lunch time of this course that I found out that my dad had been admitted with his stroke - See early posts) but have never practised it. Our German mate had also trained in it but used a German blood taking system and so wasn't really up to the job either)

I asked the SHO if she would mind doing the first one so that we knew which colour bottles to use and so that we could work out really small matters like where you stuck the needle in. She told us to "Work it out" so off we shuffled to form a battle plan. Luckily, the ward clerk saw us looking terrified and came to show us which colour bottles to use. We made an executive decision that our German mate could do the deed and followed him on to the ward. He actually managed to take the blood reasonably well from the patient and so off we shuffled, triumphant!

I hate reflecting but I would have to say that I am HORRIFIED at my actions. I should have dug my heels in and told the SHO to go and take a running jump. How STUPID was she though - surely it it dreadful practice to expect us to do something we haven't been trained to do, without at least showing us the correct way of doing it.

This would never happened as a nurse. When I qualified, you had to do 6 months on a ward before being allowed to attend a venepuncture course. You then had to be supervised in taking blood off five patients before being signed of as fit to practice.

I need to work out what I am going to say the next time this happens because from what I can see so far, being a medical student is like being thrown to the lions on a daily basis and if I don't learn how to speak up now, I am going to get eaten up.

The bubble has burst

So, I finished my pscyhiatry placement and am now in General medicine for seven weeks. It is the end of my first week now and I have had my bubble well and truly burst.

We arrived on the EMU (Emergency Medical Unit) which is a bit like casualty but with medical patients) on Wednesday afternoon and it was like walking into a circus. No-one asked us who we were or what year we were in, they just saw that we had pink student badges around our necks and told us to "Go and clerk that patient on trolley 3"

Now then, my clinical partner is an ex physio and we also have a playmate with us on this placement from Germany. He is a final year medical student who for some obscure reason, decided to come to the East Midlands on his elective (Poor Sod was obviously told that it was a lovely part of the world)

So the three of us (Who have never clerked a patient in or seen anyone else do it) shuffled to the trolley as directed. On the trolley was a 35 year old women with a left hemiparesis who had been brought in fours hours earlier by her husband (He had a nice suit on and we were terrified that he was a consultant)The look of relief on their faces when they saw us was massive (Oh God, if only they knew) so I sat down and went through my patient history headings (Listed below for anyone who might want to know these things)

Presening complaint
History of presenting complaint
Past medical history
Drug history
Social history
Family history

Our German friend was then pushed forward to do the physical bit. He decided to do a neuro exam and proceeded to test her cranial nerves, motor tone and power. We then shuffled back off, leaving her oblivious to the fact that we didn't have a clue what was wrong with her and that she would have to go through it all again when the FY1 was available.

What a joke - is this how they think they are going to train us? What the hell happened to "See one, do one, teach one"?

I never realised that I was mentally ill.

I am now on my first clinical placement on junior rotation, in psychiatry. My only other experience in mental health was in 1993 as a student nurse, when I was placed in a "drop in" day centre (Couldn't believe how many fags a group of people could get through). I think it is fair to say that until this week, my views of mental illness were archaic - mental illness happened to strange people who then went on to do very strange things.

I started this week by sitting in on an outpatient clinic with my psychiatrist. Most of the visiting patients were in various stages of depression and I made the mistake of commenting that I had never thought of depressed people as being mentally ill. I was depressed after my dad had his stroke a few years ago and ended up on six weeks of Citalopram. I knew I was depressed, but never for one moment thought of myself as being mentally ill!

I have always thought of mentally ill people as psychotic nutters (I had an altercation with a paranoid schizophrenic once that is probably to blame) but what I have learnt immediately, is that mental illness happens to normal people. It seems that you can be perfectly well one day and then wake up the next hearing voices and seeing little men running around the room. The latter are called "Lilliputian hallucinations" I love that name!

I also never knew that ECT was still a treatment and never knew that giving an anti-psychotic drug can stop the voices in Schizophrenia. That amazes me - how can a drug stop voices in your head? Apparently the voices start when too much dopamine flies around your brain, so drugs are given which bind dopamine receptors and when most of the receptors are bound, the voices stop. Brilliant.

My consultant has given me a DVD of "One flew over the cuckoo's nest" to watch this weekend. It looks a bit depressing but I think I had better keep in his good books after the "Depressed people aren't mentally ill" comment

Not many people fail in medical school

Hello!

Hells bells - can't believe it has been a year. Thank you very much to those of you who have emailed me to ask how I am getting on.


Well - to bring you up to date - I am now half way though my second year which is unbelievable. I have (Just this week) started my clinical training in my first junior rotation in psychiatry. It has been an absolute slog to get here and I think that this is why I stopped writing these posts. The other reason was that I didn't pass everything that I needed to pass and so ended up in what my medical school calls "A qualifier"

On my first day at medical school, the Dean told the audience of 400 or so students, that in four or five years time, 95% of us would be doctors. The reality is that in medical school, most people pass all the exams that are thrown at them. If you, like me, are in the small group that does not pass everything - it is not pleasant.

In February, the students on the five year course did their pre clinical exams. Out of 372 students, 82 failed one or more exams and ended up in the qualifier. In my cohort of graduate entry, 50 sat the pre-clinicals and twelve of us ended up in the qualifier.

Being in the qualifier means that you have to do the whole lot of exams again - even the stuff that you passed. Personally, I passed the clinical exam and one of the written papers, but failed the second written paper. I then had three weeks to study my arse off before sitting the whole lot two weeks ago. Thank God - I passed, and so was allowed to progress to my clinical training. Eight of my fellow qualifieees have not been so lucky and are now off the course.

Having been at this now for eighteen months I have formed some strong opinions on doing medicine as a mature candidate. From what i can see, if anything goes wrong in your life whilst studying medicine, the odds for failing rocket. I think that this is the case for any subject but graduate entry medicine does not allow any buffer for illness, turmoil or wanting to have a life. As you probably know, graduate entrants do the preclinical training in eighteen months instead of 2.5 years. Despite what you may have heard, we do exactly the same modules as the five year lot, (Well apart from a bit of Head and Neck studies, but what's a mandible between friends) so over the three semesters our workload is 33% greater than the five years students.

Some of you might be reading this, thinking that people who fail and end up in the qualifier are there because they haven't worked hard. This is BS - we worked hard, but just not hard enough!
Anyway - enough about qualifiers and stuff - I passed the shitty thing so I made it!! I have no more exams until February 2009. Whohoooooooooooo!!!!!!!

Has your beard grown today?

Today was a good day - and I can actually say that I have enjoyed the course for the first time, this week. I think this second semester has been very different to the last one and we seemed to have moved on to more clinically related stuff.

Our exam results are out next Wednesday and I think things could come crashing down. I worked hard before the exams but don't seem to have done enough during last semester. As explained in an earlier post, you can only fail one exam in the first year. If you fail more than one, you have to sit "THE QUALIFIER" which is the exam from hell, which is sat (I think) at the end of July. If you fail this, you have to sit a viva and if you fail this, things are grim. I think that if you have extenuating circumstances you may be allowed to resit the year, otherwise it is curtains.

Anyway, today we had reproduction which is taught by this amazing professor. He doesn't even look at the PowerPoint slides as he teaches and really is brilliant. He was telling us that in men, beard growth is directly in relation to testosterone levels and he mentioned an experiment that an anonymous chap did some time ago. This chap had a job where he spent a few weeks collecting specimens on an island and then came home to his missus and then went back to the island again. He must have been really bored because he decided to start measuring his beard clippings for growth every day, to see what his testosterone levels were doing.

He found that when he was on the island, his beard clippings got shorter over the first week and then (As he was preparing to come home to his wife) they got longer. Thinking about his missus raised his Testosterone levels and made his beard grow! I thought this was great! I don't live with my husband at the moment (Only at the weekends), but after eight years of marriage, I should think his beard shrivels back into his face towards the end of the week.




What's he been thinking about then!





I have been reading a brilliant blog by the Angry Medic. His posts are spot on and much easier going than mine! I sometimes hear a funeral march playing in my head when I am writing these posts so seeing a happy, young man who is also a first year medical student puts things into perspective for me. I keep going back to this point, but I would so love to have done this course at 18. I think I would have had a ball.

More good things - I dreamt about Patrick Dempsey last night. We were on holiday in Tenerife (As you do) and he was walking around in little shorts (I'm surprised I didn't wake up a bearded lady). The funniest thing was that, being the married old bugger I am, I even felt guilty in my dream. It was a very clean dream though! He just seemed to be keeping me company and bringing me cups of tea by the pool. I watched four hours of Greys anatomy last night, which must have been the culprit.











Last bit of news for today - Snoop and P Diddy are in Manchester on March 29th and I have managed to get great seats. Nice one!

Struggling to be selfish (Not me, some of my course mates)

For the first time this week, I have spoken to four people who are thinking of thowing the towel in and leaving the medical course - I am really gutted for them. They seemed to me to be flying through and looked like they would be brilliant doctors.

In my previous post, I said that I thought that you had to be extremely selfish to do my course and i think that this might be the problem for some of them - they are struggling to be selfish. I think they are finding being an older student (With responsibilities) impossible and just don't feel like they can become as selfish as they need to. It's so difficult when you are an older person with a partner, house, children etc. You need to ignore your responsibilites a lot of the time, just to keep up with the work and I understand their problem 100%. In my past life, I spent 100's of hours educating staff on achieving work life balance and can now see that it is easier said than done when the only way of keeping up with what you have done that day is to sit down for hours and hours.

The tough reality is that my family could do with me back in Wales so that I could help sort out my dads' situation and help my mum with the dogs. Being two hours away means that my mum is having to sort out a lot more of my dad's problems than she should have to (She has been divorced from him for 18 years!) and without her doing this, I wouldn't be able to stay on the course. What makes life so much easier for me is that my husband has given me the freedom to do the course. He would have been well within his rights to kick up a massive stink, but instead, he got a job down the road and went with the flow. We are still not living together but meet up in Tescos every Wednesday night (Hilarious I know)and then see each other all weekend.

Speaking to the people who are thinking of leaving has hit a nerve with me, because I am managing to be very selfish. I feel a bit guilty tonight because although I winge like a bugger most of the time, I have not thought of leaving the course - I just live with being selfish, which perhaps doesn't make me a terribly nice person.

Hmmmmm.

All about the Benjamins?

This week has been enough to blow my head off and splatter my frazzled brain over the ceiling.

It's our new semester and the seven new modules (Listed in last post), have already lost me. The membranes module on Monday was about "Flip Flop" (WTF?) and I learnt that lipids in a bilayer can flip flop, but proteins cannot (Please correct me if I am wrong). On Tuesday, I learnt that the chest has four pectoral muscles:

Pectoralis Major
Pectoralis Minor
Serratus Anterior
Subclavius

We have to learn the origins, insertions, blood supply, nerve supply and function for each one.

Today we have started on histology of the heart muscle and tomorrow we start reproduction (In the PowerPoint sense) On Friday we are doing something about disease mechanisms and today we went on to a ward for the first time and took a history off a patient.

That's the bugger you see - you learn so much in a week that remembering it all two weeks later is a massive problem. I am going to look for a memory textbook at the weekend to see if I can work out a strategy for learning all this stuff. I think there is a proven way of building long-term memory and I need some help. If any of you have some suggestions on how I can try to expand my brain power (Please don't suggest getting a bigger head) I would be very grateful.

I was thinking again today of why I really came into Medicine. Is it all about the Benjamin's? I have found that no one really speaks about coming into medicine for the money - it seems to be distasteful. I have to admit that, come graduation day, this is going to be me:



SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!

Yeah right - a junior doctor here is not on big bucks ( See here for our UK salary scale) but they do qualify on more money than many of my experienced nursing mates are now earning. What does cheer me up is that GPs are earning brilliant salaries, but if the Daily Mail has their way, they will have taken massive pay cuts by the time I get there.

The one thing I totally agree with is that there are easier professions to enter if money is your only goal. Even three months into the course, I can see how horrendous it can get and just doing it for the money wouldn't get you through. I have to be completely honest though - future earning potential is a large part of why I am putting myself through this purgatory.

OK, OK I might annoy people saying that and get emails saying that I should want to be a doctor so I can care for sick people and make them well. My reply to this is that if this were my only goal, I would carry on being a nurse. I would also argue that my old nursing job allowed to me to care for my patients to a far, far higher standard than I will be able to do as a doctor in the NHS. I worked as an Occupational health manager for a multi national American company, looking after 800 employees and I was fortunate enough to have the budget and time to be able to ensure that whatever they needed, they received. My patients were ruined!

I do daydream about being rich someday - on the way to Uni, I walk past some amazing houses (Oadby has some of the best I have ever seen) and they often have "MollyMaid" (Cleaning company) cars outside. I want a house and a cleaner - so shoot me! I have been in the health game for ten years and know many consultants who live in AMAZING houses, but work such long hours that they never get to see them in the light. At least their wives feel the benefit though. My husband will be more than happy to live in the executive house (With my mother, father and ten dogs in the attic) Perhaps I will become the family cash cow. I can live with that!

As a nurse, salary wise the ceiling was low and I hit it at the age of 27. At least as a doctor, there is scope for higher earnings.... I am rambling now. My last word is that there are now many nurses and physios going into medicine, but have you ever heard of a doctor coming into nursing or physio? I haven't and I am 100% sure that money plays a part in this.

I am a selfish git

Me after my genetics exam, (On finding out we were starting the Introductory clinical course three hours later)





OMG - I am SO tired.
After two weeks and seven exams, they finally finished at 1030 yesterday with the genetics module, which was absolutely horrible. The genetics module, for me, was a murky blott on the landscape, where the module leader decided that we were not to have any proper teaching or help during the group work sessions. This led to us sitting there going around and around in circles and when someone had the cheek to complain, they were told that these complaints are the same every year and we should trust the way the module was run. This resulted in a demoralised group of students and very little learning. Why does a little voice in my head cry out "If you have had the same pissing complaints, year after year, is it not time to start bloody listening to them? What do we know eh - we are only students.

Anyway - the exam was awful, with a big Hardy Weinberg claculation at the end. Don't ask me about Hardy Weinberg (Another group session where not only did the group tutor not help, but actually told us that he did not know the answers.....GREAT! All I do know about hardy Weinberg is that it's two blokes who were kind enough to create a maths calculation so that we can work out frequency of genetic disease - really handy thing to be able to do..... Not)

I think Leicester must want blood from us as we then started the introductory clinical course at 1330! We were like a big field of cabbages sitting there reeling. The five year course don't have to do it until next year so we joined the second year and although I moaned like a bugger, I am actually quite chuffed as we are doing a course that the five year cohort will have to wait a year for - and it brings it home that this course is so much faster.

I really had my worries about the GEP. I heard some horror stories about it from other students and got worried enough to also apply for the five year course. If anyone is thinking of doing this (Applying to two courses at the same uni) get in touch as I have some views on it!

Having done three months of the course I would have to say that I think that the GEP is well worth doing. I live with three students on the five year course and there hasn't been a massive difference between the two courses so far. Basically you have no life regardless of whether you are doing it for five years or four, so why not work a little harder and get it over with! The only real difference in semester one was that we did an extra module during the week (Health Psychology) and an extra add-on module called "Health in the Community" (Not exactly an inspiring way of spending time, especially if you are over 25)

This semester, we are doing 6 modules:

Membranes and receptors
Musculo skeletal system
Reproduction
Cardiovascular
Health and society
Mechanisms of disease
There is also a clinical course (The one we stared yesterday) where we go on the ward every week and do history taking, system examination, problem solving etc.

I am SO glad that the exams are finished - the last three weeks have probably been the toughest I have ever known. What has become really clear to me is that you have to be a selfish git to study medicine. I really mean that. You have to put yourself first and blank out friends and family needs because at exam time, there is so much work that the only way of getting through is sitting in a room studying from when you get up until when you go to bed. A few people have commented that they have even felt guilty sleeping during the past few weeks. The Good news is that this only seems to happen around exams and the rest of the time, we get away with not having too much to do.

Anyway, back to being a selfish git - this has been hard for me and I am sure other mature students must feel the same way. If you are 18 with no husband, animals or homes to run, perhaps things would be easier, as you can get away with just sorting yourself out. When you have commitments, it really is hard ignoring them, but as I said, I found the only way was to blank everyone out and just be ....a selfish git!

So here I am at the end of exams with three dogs that stink (No time to clean their teeth) A deserted dad, a moaninh mum, a smelly husband (No time to remind him to wash and his knickers are all dirty because I just haven't had the time to wash them)a dirty house and an ironing basket that reaches the ceiling. In all this disarray, the new course starts Monday and the workload looks MASSIVE.

Here we go again.

Breakthrough!

So it's Monday and we are half way through exams. I have not left my room for three weeks and have no life or thoughts other than revision, panic, revision, panic.

The good news is that I had a breakthrough at the beginning of 2007. When I look back, I realise that I felt like I have been playing at being a medical student. I have never actually felt like I deserve to be here, and have felt unlikely to make it through the first year.

My reasons for this that my dad had a massive stroke on May 17th which left him unable to speak or look after himself. He was still in hospital when I started at medical school and it was horrendously hard to concentrate and learn, when he was faced with not having anywhere to go or anyone to look after him. He moved into a rehab flat in Mid November and then the fun really started because he decided he would get regular taxis to his bungalow. I would then get phone calls to say the rehab flat workers didn't know where he was and I would end up coming home from Leicester (Two hour drive) to find him and persuade him to go back. The stress of this has been indescribable and things got worse when, on December 23rd, social services decided he had been in the rehab flat for long enough and give him 48hrs notice that he was going into a care home. Nice Christmas present.

Christmas was awful - just a constant round of trying to keep his spirits up and travelling to and from his care home.

When I visit my dad, there doesn't seem to be any sense of him being glad to see me or that he is grateful for the effort I have made. I think he is gutted that I have not dumped medical school and looked after him full time and bitter as hell that this has happened to him in the first place. My guilt of having him in a care home is constant and my only way of coping is to block it out and not think about it.

Part of me is angry at him because he has abused himself into this stroke by drinking, smoking and eating crap for the past twenty years and has let his house get into such a state that social services have now deemed it unfit for living in. The other part of me knows that his dad also had a stoke at the age of 60 and so perhaps he would have had one without the extra risk factors.

I have been dragged down by all of this - I wouldn't be human if I hadn't.

My breakthrough occurred straight after New Year when I really started hammering the revision. I realised that I could do the work and that that more than anything, I really want to do the course. All I can do is hope for the best with these exams and then start afresh next week when we start semester two.

Where has the time gone!

Bloody hell! I finished uni on 15th December and am now 2 weeks into a four week holiday, before starting back on 15th January for two weeks of exams.

September - December was a 12 week semester, studying six modules (And some other "fascinating" extra modules) which will be examined when we go back in January. I am sitting here, completely overwhelmed with revision and wandering how on earth I can get through it all.

The situation with my dad is going from bad to worse and having this in the background makes revision so much harder, if not impossible. Having refused (He still can't speak a word, but manages to get his opinion across perfectly well) all offers of help from his social worker, the worse scenario possible happened....on the Friday of Xmas weekend, he got moved into a residential care home. He is 61 and apart from not being able to speak and walking with a stick, he is pretty much OK. In his care home there are 30 residents, all in their 80's, 90's and 100's. Most need a lot of care and this place is completely wrong for him. It is horrendous visiting him there and the stress of having a young parent in a care home is always at the back of my head. I can't believe that all of this has happened.

And so back to the revision

When I go into hospital.......

If I ever go into hospital as a patient, I have decided that this is the dream team of people who I want to look after me. I admit that two of them are purely there for me to drool over.

I had to pick Karl Kennedy as he never leaves the hospital and Duffy and Charlie are the greatest nurses ever!

I should be looking at genetics rather than spending time doing this, but since my workload got so heavy, I love finding an excuse to not study and do anything else!

I couldn't have said it better!

I read this post tonight from 'topher's blog at "The Rumors were true". He is a medical student in the Carribean and I had to put a link to the post here, because it is describing exactly how I feel about trying, and failing to get on top of the workload.

I love reading some of the medical student blogs and this one and "That med school guy" are brilliant. It's strange to think that students in Canada and the Carribean are having the same problems as little old me, in the Midlands!

I am happy - it's the weekend and I am being a housewife.

Then Monday will come around and the merry go round starts again!

Men I would leave my husband for....1

I have been married for a long time and as lovely though he is, there are some men that would have me running for the hills.

Of course, these men are also unavailable, out of my league and unlikely to be interested in a little women from Wales. I have no doubt that my husband has a similar list which will contain really classy women like Jodi Marsh and Jenna Jameson.

This chap is just......beautiful!

A month in Medicine.....

.......Or five weeks in to be exact.

This week we have studied:

mRNA transcription
enzymes
DNA mutation, damage and cancer
Child psychology
Cognitive behaviour change
Histology - connective tissues
Examining the musculo skeletal system
Cohort studies

Phew and it's only Thursday!

I continue to be shocked with the volume of work that there is. I would say that this is the first week where I feel organised and as though I am keeping on top of the work given each day. This is a BIG problem as I am now 5 weeks into an eleven-week semester. My last five weeks worth of work is unorganised and I haven't a clue when I will be able to go through it, ready for revision. I feel like it has taken me a month to settle into the course, but the shitty thing is that we are half way through our first semester and I needed to be settled in from the beginning.

The message which I so wish I had taken on board is that you need to be organised from Day 1. I am in quite a mess because of this and I can't blame it on having going out on the beer every night. I haven't been anywhere but seem to have frittered the time away.

I have settled into my hall of residence, which is brand new and fine. The downpoint is that there are 730 people here and only two mature students! I haven't found this to be a problem but other mature students might want to avoid New Hall for this very reason. Nixon Court and Opal Court have many mature students and are very near to the medical school.

To make things more complicated my husband has just got a job down the road teaching. He's in digs in Coventry and between us we are paying £650 a month in rent. It makes sense to rent a house and live here together but I am not sure if I can get out of this Hall contract. We shall see!

I think I would quite miss living in Halls though - I have gotten used to not having to be a housewife in the week - no cooking and no cleaning his knickers from Monday-Friday. The upshot of this is that I have to bloody clean them all at the weekend, but I shouldn't moan as I love it really.

I have been tagged!

Thank you!

Charlie Brown from http://thatmedschoolguy.blogspot.com/ has tagged me.

I have to admit, I really didn't have a clue what this meant but I had a look around and it seems that I have to write down 20 things about me. I will post ten now and finish the rest off when I can. Great stuff!

1. I love hip hop music - especially Jay-Z. I am a real nerd (You can only guess how naff a white housewife from Wales looks trying to rap) and know the lyrics of most of his songs. The best thing I have heard lately was on the Radio One Westwood show on Tuesday night. It is a live piece where Tupac joined Notorious B.I.G on stage and it blew me away! I got to meet Tim Westwood last night and probably bored him senseless talking about it. All the other girls were hanging around him, trying to latch on to the aftershow party, and I just wanted to bend his ear about the music!

2. I am missing the "I want a baby" gene It has been replaced with the "I want a King Charles Spaniel" gene

3. I am developing claustrophobia and a bit of OCD. I never had this but now I do and I can't sit in the middle of rows. I have to sit on the end (Seems to work for me) I also have to keep my curtains open so I can see out of the window and make sure that my pens always have their tops on (Shit - I am scaring myself, admitting this stuff) I must be lots of fun to live with.

4. I used to be a classical ballet dancer. I danced in a group who toured around Amsterdam and when I got back home the Chinese whispers had gone around my town and I was now a stripper in the sex clubs of Amsterdam. I love this rumour!

5. I am passionate about animal welfare. I despise modern farming methods and seeing animals carted around the roads when they are being transported makes me cry.

6. I have no life since September 20th this year when I started medical school. I am drowning - the work just keeps coming and I can't get on top of it.

7. I have been married for seven years to a very nice man. He used to be a footballer and played for Wales! I am now living 140 miles apart from him which is interesting. He didn't like dogs when we met but is now as bad as me and sleeps with our dogs between his legs, on his head and on his pillow.

8. I am a terrible cynic.

9. I despise bad manners, like when you hold a door open and they don't say thanks, or when you let a car pull out in front of you and they don't acknowledge it.

10. This is getting hard!

Studying at medical school

Hells Bells.

There really is a lot of work to get through and to learn. Where does one begin?!

I think for UK students, having A levels in Biology and Chemistry is a great (Perhaps vital) starting point for my course. My graduate group have mostly worked for the past few years and so although we have covered these subjects, the details can be rusty. I am quite lucky because I have spent the past three years studying chemistry to A level and I had the best teacher in the world (Brian Jones, I salute you!)

Each day, the five year students do one module in the morning, and the four year group do that, and an extra one in the afternoon. I have had an email off a fellow nurse asking about my timetable, so here it is:

Monday a.m Biological Molecules
Tuesday a.m Genetics and the basis of disease
p.m Health Psychology
Wed a.m Health and disease in populations (Epidemiology)
Thurs a.m Tissues of the body (Histology)
Friday a.m Metabolism

As well as this the four year course (GEP) have a clinical skills module. We started this last week (On our first day!) when a SHO came to show us how to do cardiovascular examination. This will be built on during the next four years. We also have other things like communication skills and multi-disciplinary team (MDT) skills. The latter went down like a lead balloon with many of us on the GEP. Having spent the last eleven years working in a MDT I would rather not have to do this, and could use the time trying to get my head around genetics. But there you go - I can't complain too loudly because this is the only problem I have with my course and I can't exactly roll up to the tutors’ door and say, "You can bugger orf. I am not coming to your MDT skills lectures because I am ahem......an expert" I am not an expert at MDT working, but I have done it to death and don't feel that this module will make me any more of an expert than I currently am. So there!

So that's basically what we have to do over the next eleven weeks. We then have four weeks off at Christmas, which will be taken up with revision, as our exams are first week back. We have exams on all the listed modules and have to pass the lots of them. Nice!

With all these modules, my innate worry is where do I bloody start? The uni boffins have told us that we can't learn it all and so have to form "structures" in our minds which we can "hang" our knowledge on. They mean that we have to understand what we are doing (Too much to learn, parrot fashion) and try to keep relating things to the bigger picture. Clear as mud then. I have read an excellent posting from "The haversian canal" on learning at medical school:

http://nielsolson.us/archives/2006/03/recent_thoughts_on_medical_education.php

This nice chap writes really well about learning at medical school and also wears a Navy lieutenant uniform, which is never a bad thing.

I have also taken heed of poor Charlie Brown at
http://thatmedschoolguy.blogspot.com/

He is a little further into his first months at medical school than me and is very stressed. His advice is to revise, revise, revise. Not sitting here writing my blog then!

This post is a bit long so I will go. I have to end by telling you about my Jay-Z experience. I LOVE Jay-Z and have seen every live show he has done in the UK over the past five years. I paid ....a.....fortune....on ebay for front row seats at Wembley. Like a weeks wages (In the good old days, when I worked for a living) All I can bear to say is that I got stuck in a 5 hour traffic jam (At the M5 at 1900 on a Sunday night - where the hell where you all going?) and got there for the last 10 minutes. This brings tears to my eyes. See how close we were:

I just about had time to take this photo and then he went. I can't put into words how gutted I am.

Half way though first week at medical school

Today was a good day! We had histology this morning followed by dissection and then cardio vascular examination this afternoon.

The histology was great - we looked at epithelial cells and the way the day was laid out was really well planned. We had a lecture first on the basics of simple and stratified epithelia. We then went into the dissection room (DR) and looked at bodily structures and epithelial linings.

I haven't mentioned the DR in my last two posts because I am a bit worried about how much I can say without causing trouble. I have to mention it though, because it is so integral to what we are doing. These words obviously represent my thoughts and not those of the university (Sorry about the formalities, but I know this is a sensitive area)

The dissection room is a strange place to be. Ours is superbly set up and in a big hall with around 40 Cadavers in there. We were introduced to it last week and despite eleven years of nursing, the shock factor for me was big.

It just seems so strange to walk into a room where there are so many dead people. We were in groups of around 15 people and our demonstrator peeled back the sheet.... and there was our body. I am not sure if ours was a man or a women because we could only see from the chest up. I didn't pass out or anything like that but just felt very odd and a bit sad. We had been given an intro to the DR during intro week and apparently, dissection is becoming less and less common in UK medical schools because of the huge cost associated with it and also because less people are donating their bodies. I wander whether Gunther von Hagens has a lot to do with this.

We Will Cut you up in front of a live studio audience!

For me personally, I think it will be of massive value to be able to see structures and where everything fits in. One of the speakers last week (A professor of surgery) said that he has found anatomy to be lacking in many junior doctors and my medical school seem very focused on ensuring we know our stuff. Once I get over the queasy feeling in my stomach, I will love it!

During histology today, we looked at a human head and I was very, very unnerved. I tried to concentrate on the tissues we were supposed to be looking at, but I couldn't help looking around to see if anyone else was thinking "Shit - This is someone's head!" I couldn't help thinking that this was someone (Again, not sure if was a male or a female head - I am going to make a fantastic doctor) who had perhaps been speaking to their family a few weeks or months ago, or walking down the street. Very strange experience.

Phase One - week one! Thought of the day.....90% of our DNA matches that of a banana!

Bloody hell! It is day two of the course and there is so much work to do already.

Yesterday we had two modules: Biological molecules in the morning and clinical skills in the afternoon. Both were very good and I am SO glad that I have just done the years of chemistry, because I would absolutely have a real struggle on my hands without it. We never did any chemistry as a student nurse and in one three hour session yesterday, we touched on loads of principles from the AS chemistry course.

First note to any nurses thinking of doing medicine = go and do a chemistry course - I would recommend AS level at least .

The clinical skills session was on examination of the cardio vascular system and was an introduction to basic clinical skills - all good stuff. My nursing covered perhaps 50% of it but there was plenty of new stuff such as listening to the apex beat and other heart sounds that will be completely new to me.

Day two, we had genetics all morning and Health Psychology all afternoon. The genetics is going to be, erm.. challenging to me because it is all new, but the psychology was pretty much what I have spent the past ten years doing.

I am living in a really nice hall which is 100% improvement on last week. It is small but clean and now i have my internet and TV set up, I am fine. It is costing me around £3700 per year which includes food.

I am not as homesick this week but still feel like I have wandered in to an 18-30 holiday and am waiting to go back home and get back to normal. It is only today that I am starting to feel like a medical student - last week I felt like an intruder who had crept in to the back of class. It is a massive, massive change for me and I am giving myself time to settle down. The one thing that is crystal clear is that the pace of work is so fast that I need to work for a good few hours each night, right from the beginning. I remember starting my nurse course and having to give a 2,000 word essay in after three months on the course. With this course, I have at least 6 exams in 12 weeks time and need to pass all (They only allow you to fail one module in the whole year in order to go to year two. If you fail more than one module, you have to sit a qualifying exam in the summer which looks horrendously stressful)

Induction week at medical school

Many apologies for the lack of posts but I have not had an internet connection until now. I haven't spent the whole week sozzled - honest!

Well - I am finally here. I really never thought that I would make it, but I did and here I am in D halls on my induction week. The medical students arrived on Sunday and are all staying in halls so we can "Bond" .There are around 270 five year students and 60 of us older, graduate students. The week has been very well organised with daily "Welcome" lectures, uni familiarisation and nightly organised socials in the town centre.

I have found this week very, very hard. As an older student, I suppose that I am stuck in my ways and I have given up an awful lot to come here.

When I arrived in my room in D Hall on Sunday, my heart sank. What a dive! My room had disgusting brown dirty carpet tiles which had lots of silverfish crawling in them and squashed mosquitoes on the walls. I could see the mattress springs though the sheets and when I got in bed, the mattress was so saggy that I had to sleep in a boomerang shape. The others on my corridor thought it was fine to come in at 1,2 and 3 am and shout as loud as they could.....Ok you get the idea - I hated the place!

I wanna go HOME!!!

As well as the accommodation, I found it very overwhelming being around so many new people, although they all seem a nice bunch. I have never, in my life, been homesick and thought that I was much too old for that kind of thing now, but I have missed my old life and just wanted to come home, put my uniform on and go to my nice normal job with people I know and then come home to my nice house and eat nice food with my nice husband!
I suppose the good thing with being a bit older is that I know I am likely to be much happier next week when I move into my proper accommodation and get started on the course. What I can safely say is that the medical school seems excellent and the four years are likely to be quite a slog!

Must have been a lack of competition

Well bugger me! I got the job.

I checked my mobile yesterday and realised that the nice lady who interviewed me had left a message a few hours after I left. This message had been there for two days (More cringing) so I don't know what they must think of me.

Of course, I now can't imagine how I am going to manage it because I have also agreed to do some hours in the tampon factory too (I don't actually make the tampons, I help to look after the people that do) and also to do a few hours a week in my lovely welding factory (Demoted to doing the filing, in a room with no windows)

Am still very calm and wandering why I am not hysterical and running around the factory, beating my chest in anguish. Still time though.......

I start on the medicine course in four days time and from them on this blog is going to be a barrel of laughs as I winge and moan my way though the course. With this in mind, I am going to tell you a bit about myself so if you are not interested, come back next week and I promise the posts will then be about life at medical school.

I have realised that in my last post, I placed my husband under my dogs in my list of important things. This is not good, but can you blame me - look at them:




Kings Charles Cavaliers come in four shades and I have three of them. I really want the fourth (A Blenheim) but my husband has banned me (He is far enough down my list as it is)

We have had cavaliers since I was five years old and I love them so much that every time one has died, we have been so cut up that we have sworn never to have another one again. Then a few weeks have gone by and we have gotten so depressed that we have gone out and bought another one. I lost my last two from heart failure (Very close to each other) seven years ago and three weeks later we ended up buying three more. My husband was never a dog person but is now just as bad as me and I can safely say that we have the three happiest dogs I have ever met. They are our babies and are clever enough to realise that if real babies were to come along their reign would end. To ensure that this never happens, they like to come to bed and three dogs and two people do not, a happy bed, make.

We alternate through the night between two beds, trying to get away from them, but they are never far behind - Victoria would be horrified