I initially fell behind with posting due to general life being busy, and then coronavirus happened and wow did it complicate things! Anyway, for this post I'm going to talk about term 2, which has just finished.
The first week back after xmas break was our second immersion week. This time I was based in a GP surgery and only had to attend in the mornings! I spent two mornings with the GP, one with a practice nurse and one with a health care assistant. Even though I have worked in a GP surgery for 10 years now, and racked up a number of shadowing hours too, I still found this week interesting and informative, and surprisingly enjoyable! We also spent one day during this week studying personal and professional development, which included some teamworking, and legal aspects of medicine. On the Friday night I treated myself to a pamper night in with a new Lush bath bomb from Xmas, face mask and foot pack.
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| The World's Smallest Disco Bath Bomb - £5.50 |
We ended the week with a birthday celebration for one of my housemates and we were feeling refreshed and ready to start off the new term.
The new terms topics covered endocrinology, reproduction and foetal development, and gynaecology and sexual health and we worked through the topics in vaguely that order.
Refreshers week meant heading out for a meal with our medic kids. We had Italian at "VIP Pizza" and then walked to "Sprinkles Gelato" for dessert!
The clinical module this term included more clinical technical skills learning including wound closure and care, local anaesthetic, and intramuscular injections.
At the end of January I spent another day in theatres with the anaesthetists. I know I still need to type up a blog about this! (Another quarantine job to do!)
At the begining of February I decided that my room needed a shake up so I could actually get to my desk properly to study, and one of my housemates helped me to change it around.
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In the middle of February we celebrated "Galentines Day" with a movie night in with our friends, and then the next day I met some friends from home for dinner and then headed to The Brighton Centre for a Bowling For Soup concert, with support from Not Ur Girlfrenz and Simple Plan.
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| Not Ur Girlfrenz |
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| Simple Plan |
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| Bowling For Soup |
I also treated myself to a Bellabeat Leaf fitness tracker in their Valentines Day sale, as in clinical environments we have to be bare below the elbows, ruling out fitbits or other similar trackers, and often may not have our phones on us either, while we are probably doing the bulk of our daily steps during that time. I was interested to be able to see just how many steps I was racking up on placements and look forward to gathering more data on it.
Towards the end of February we had our third immersion week. For me this was in the Early Intervention in Psychosis Service. This service was about a 45 minute drive from the medical school, and I had to travel there first, and the placement was full 9-5 days so it was a very long week! I have to admit that Psychiatry is one of the topics I am probably the least excited about and I could have ended up having a very miserable week here, however, I kept an open mind and engaged with the team and ended up learning a lot and really enjoying myself, which was definitely contributed to by the fantastic atmosphere of teamwork and support fostered by the team. During the week we had a day away from placement to attend our Manual Handling Training and Venepuncture Training. I used to be a phlebotomist so this was a great refresher for me. I actually hate needles being put into me though but I bravely allowed one of my colleagues to take blood from me as her first patient. I was equal parts terrified and so proud of her! And she did a great job, there was hardly even a bruise. I rounded off the week with another Saturday in theatres, and a very much needed Sunday in bed!
The first week of March I filmed a week in my life at medical school video and so that will be coming your way very soon. It was a very normal week, with lectures, more clinical technical skills, a powerpoint presentation, and a diabetes alert dog visitor!
The second week of March was due to be our last real week of teaching, but I missed the Monday to take my Brother to the Japanese Embassy in London to apply for his student visa. We usually only have one or two lectures on a Monday so fortunately I didn't miss much. As the week went on the coronavirus news only got more intense and other universities and medical schools were starting to close. Ours was still adamant that we would try to have our exam on Thursday 26th March unless we were told otherwise and that they would update us twice a week on Mondays and Fridays. Some clinical placements were starting to be cancelled though. On the Friday it was still "business as usual" so on the Monday morning I went to my scheduled phlebotomy supervised session at the hospital to get signed off, and when I arrived back home the school office was still not giving away any secrets about our exam. However, later the same day they finally emailed to let us know that the school was closing, the exam would be cancelled and term 3 would move online.
So after a couple of days of eating our way through as much freezer food as possible, I headed home on the Friday to be with my family before the inevitable lockdown.
I'll be updating from quarantine and, you never know, I might even be able to keep on schedule!
Thanks for reading!
Katherine x
