This is going to be another long one, I'm afraid, while I'm still getting caught up.
My housemates and I arrived at our new uni house around 10 days before Year 2 officially started. We wanted to be in time for the champagne reception to greet the new first years 8 days before our new term started.
We have a medic family system where second years volunteer to be "parents" to the new first years and help them navigate life at med school, studying, writing assignments and preparing for exams (although in reality they don't ask us very much), and so the champagne reception is where we attempt to meet our "children" for the first time. Between the two sets of "parents" in my uni house we have seven "children" and we managed to meet a grand total of three of them on this first night! They all seemed so lovely, and well matched to us.
After the champagne reception we headed over to the sports bar on campus for a few drinks and more socialising, before eventually heading home.
A few days later we hosted our kids at our house for a medic family meal, which we themed as grannies and babies. Everyone was such a good sport with the dress up. Fortunately for our kids we didn't make them go out clubbing dressed like it... mostly because we were too lazy to go out clubbing!
Term started for us on Monday 30th September and the theme for this term was Neuroscience and Behaviour. The first day had us learning blood flow for the brain using strawberry laces from our lecturer, which we got to eat afterwards. It was a great start to the term. I can't say it continued that way!
Neurology and psychiatry are both complex topics and this term was well and truly dense. We didn't really have any more teaching hours but the amount we learned in those hours seemed like so much more, and included more complex concepts.
Now we're in Year 2 they also expect us to start learning how to read around the topics and learn more independently. For me, personally, this is something I was used to doing in my previous degree and so I don't mind it.
Our clinical module has also ramped up compared to last year. We have a lot more different types of sessions to rotate through, and they also introduced immersion weeks where we pause study and spend a whole week on placement.
Clinical module is just on one day per week (this year it's Thursdays). In the morning we usually have a lecture followed by a seminar, and in the afternoon we rotate through different activities. This module runs throughout the whole year (rather than 1 term like the scientific theory type modules).
We still have workshops like we did last year where we learn about how to perform different types of examinations, such as a cranial nerve examination.
Virtually everything else in the afternoon is new to us. We have community hospital teaching, instead of the GP placements we had last year, which is where we go to meet patients and practice the history taking and examination skills we have learned.
Clinical technical skills is where we learn how to do things like observations and completing the chart, ECG taking and reading and wound care and closure.
Inequalities and Inclusion in Healthcare sessions are usually a lecture followed by small group teaching where we discuss things further. We learn about how healthcare is not equal amongst all people and about groups which can become excluded from healthcare in one way or another, like homeless people for example.
Time for Dementia afternoons are timetabled to allow us time to visit our allocated family for our chronic disease study and essay. This study is to help us to learn about how chronic diseases affect patients and their families.
The Initial Assessment programme is undertaken at the local hospital and these afternoons are to help us learn to assess unwell patients in different situations. This is the only group of sessions which I haven't had any of yet so perhaps I can explain it more once I've done it!
Outside of studying I decided to start a new Harry Potter jigsaw puzzle of the Marauder's map, which is honestly all one colour apart from the writing. I am still doing this puzzle now! Although I'm pleased to say I have made some significant progress!
I had a girls evening out with my housemates where we went to Lush to treat ourselves to some products, and then we headed to Sprinkles. Sprinkles is a dessert restaurant in Brighton which does ice cream/gelato/sorbet and cookie dough, waffles, etc. I feel like it has a bit of a retro vibe to it but I really like it. I've been back since!
Halloween celebrations began early this year as I was home visiting my family a couple of weeks before Halloween. Naturally, my family were celebrating in themed style and we chose "The Lord of the Rings" for our party theme. Mum and I spent ages organising the food and labelling it all. I tried to think of a relevant quote from the films to go with each food.
Of course we had to include "What's taters, precious? What's taters?"
My family all gathered round at my Mum's house for food and a good catch up.
The same weekend, both of my sisters were performing in a dance show in our hometown and so I joined my family at the theatre to watch them. This was the first performance in my life which I have just watched, instead of dancing, singing, or helping backstage, and only the second performance I have ever watched there. It was a slightly strange experience. I find it quite emotional watching the girls (and boys) perform and I wonder if it's because I am so used to being up on that stage with them! I do miss performing sometimes, but I sure don't miss the nerves!
Back at uni it was time to get the Halloween decorations into full swing, and we definitely bought way too many pumpkins and squashes of various sorts. We only carved one though so the others lasted for ages as general Autumn decorations.
Our uni house is in a really residential area, packed with families and so on Halloween we stocked up with sweets and moved the decorations outside. We thought we would be able to watch a scary movie and get ready to go out but honestly we had so many children come to Trick or Treat that we had to run out for extra sweets twice! It was so heartwarming though, seeing all the little children and toddlers in their costumes! Eventually, as it got later, the knocking slowed up and we were able to get ready for a rare night out!
After Halloween it was time for the first of the new immersion weeks. There are four immersion week placement types - GP placement, GP teaching, Community placement, and Secondary Care placement and we spend a whole week in each of these placement types.
My first placement was Secondary Care at The Royal Sussex County Hospital. These placements are not just to learn about what doctors do, but to learn about what other people do, whether they are health care professionals or not. It is to help us to understand how the hospital runs and who does what.
My mornings were spent with physiotherapy, speech and language therapy on the neurology ward, main operating theatres, and advanced care practitioners on the cardiac ward. These placements were really interesting, although it turned out I have a bit of a problem with theatres. I managed to have a panic attack in the first few minutes, before the surgeon even arrived, and so I ended up spending the morning learning about clinical simulation instead. Following this experience with theatre I was offered the opportunity for a sort of exposure therapy. I'm going to cover this whole thing in more detail in a separate post.
The afternoons were spent working as a team, doing a scavenger hunt, working on a discharge plan, and presenting our work.
During immersion week it was bonfire night and so we headed out to Lewes to watch the parade. Rumoured to be the best bonfire celebrations in the world, I would highly recommend seeing it at least once. However, beware of the restrictions on driving, parking and public transport on the day. It takes a little bit of forethought to plan the evening. The website has more information (
https://www.lewesbonfirecelebrations.com/) and public transport should be checked on the relevant websites too.
The end of immersion week signalled the yearly Medic Mayhem event, and this year I actually managed to go! It's a rare event where students from all five years attend and the idea is to dress up as a medical pun, for example we were cardiac arrest.
I squeezed in a couple of days at home for my Dad's birthday. We visited his tree and took a memorial plaque to him.
The next big event was Winter Ball. Last year this was after our end of term exam, but this year the addition of immersion weeks to the second year timetable means that it now doesn't line up with the first year timetable and their final exam was a whole week before ours. We couldn't have the ball after their exam with only days to go until ours, and we couldn't have the ball after our exam or all of the first years would have already gone home for xmas. So we settled on having the ball around a month before the exams instead. It was a shame to not have it at the end of term as a treat but it was still a nice evening out.
Before I got too deep into exam revision I had a day out to Drusillas Zoo while they had their winter husky petting cave open. I got to visit my Dad's sloth and pet huskies, it was a great day out! Then it was time to crack on with decorating for xmas and getting some revision done!
As soon as our final exam was over it was time to celebrate xmas with my housemates. We had wrapped presents for each other, stuffed stockings, and cooked up a full xmas dinner.
We had a lovely xmas day before heading home for our xmas break with our families. I'll cover xmas break in the next post.
Thanks for reading.
Katherine x
