Back on level 7...
Hi,
Having passed the pathology course (I got a merit) and had a 10 day break for Christmas (I had no work, other than writing a voluntary essay for a pathology essay competition, so even though the holiday was shorter than previously, it was more of a holiday), I'm now back on the general medicine wards. We had a day of learning some more new clinical skills yesterday, before we were let near any more patients. They included setting up drips and infusion pumps, giving oxygen and various inhalers and nebulisers, giving injections, and testing lung function. We also got to practise our cannulation technique on models and do ECGs on each other.
Today we had an introductory lecture and overvview of interpreting ECGs and chest X-rays, and then we met the doctors we'll be with for the next 6 weeks. I'm in a group of four students, two of which are fast-trakers (people who've done other degrees and are now doing a 4-year medicine course, and who tend to be scarily intelligent). Our pre-registration house officer and senior house officer gave us a quick tour of the wards, which are the same ones I was on before the pathology course, and a reminder of how to spot rapidly deteriorating patients and what to do about them, before we got started. We then followed them as they checked a couple of patients and took blood from a couple more.
Tomorrow we have a communication skills session first thing and then we'll be back to meet more of our patients. We have some timetabled lectures on Friday afternoons, but other than that we'll mostly be seeing patients and following doctors, and arranging a bit more teaching with our doctors, for the next few weeks. There are also various assessments, including a case presentation, and we have to fill in a log book about the patients we examine and take histories from, and when nothing else is going on we'll be free to read up on the conditions we see, aiming to cover the important presentations on our syllabus. That seems to be the general plan, anyway, but we'll see how it works out over the coming days...
Having passed the pathology course (I got a merit) and had a 10 day break for Christmas (I had no work, other than writing a voluntary essay for a pathology essay competition, so even though the holiday was shorter than previously, it was more of a holiday), I'm now back on the general medicine wards. We had a day of learning some more new clinical skills yesterday, before we were let near any more patients. They included setting up drips and infusion pumps, giving oxygen and various inhalers and nebulisers, giving injections, and testing lung function. We also got to practise our cannulation technique on models and do ECGs on each other.
Today we had an introductory lecture and overvview of interpreting ECGs and chest X-rays, and then we met the doctors we'll be with for the next 6 weeks. I'm in a group of four students, two of which are fast-trakers (people who've done other degrees and are now doing a 4-year medicine course, and who tend to be scarily intelligent). Our pre-registration house officer and senior house officer gave us a quick tour of the wards, which are the same ones I was on before the pathology course, and a reminder of how to spot rapidly deteriorating patients and what to do about them, before we got started. We then followed them as they checked a couple of patients and took blood from a couple more.
Tomorrow we have a communication skills session first thing and then we'll be back to meet more of our patients. We have some timetabled lectures on Friday afternoons, but other than that we'll mostly be seeing patients and following doctors, and arranging a bit more teaching with our doctors, for the next few weeks. There are also various assessments, including a case presentation, and we have to fill in a log book about the patients we examine and take histories from, and when nothing else is going on we'll be free to read up on the conditions we see, aiming to cover the important presentations on our syllabus. That seems to be the general plan, anyway, but we'll see how it works out over the coming days...
posted by Jane Davis @ 11:20 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home