Why would anyone care?

Here I am succumbing into the temptation of creating my own blog. This is something I have been postponing for a while as I was thinking

'why would anyone care reading my blog? What do I have to offer to the world?'

However, having a blog I believe will help me being a more 'reflective' individual, a skill that we are not really taught but are told to adapt in medical school.....

As I start my final year at medical school, I have a word in my head that will torture me all year round 'FINALS!' Someone else put it in singing form, 'It's the FINALS countdown..!' .

Since this is an important year for me, I thought I will need a forum where to share my experience on a daily basis - to comment on things I see at the hospital and also 'reflect' on them. Note the word 'reflection'! A crucial word to consider! However, through this

'I want to nurture other interests in life apart from medicine such as music, sport (especially squash and swimming) , Global Health, politics, pub quizzes, volunteering and also God and religion'

I feel that it is important for me not to get lost in the world of medicine but still maintain an interest in other things in life as this will make me feel more fulfilled and whole as a person.

It has been 3 weeks since I have started my medical rotations and it has been rather varied. I have spent a week in MAU (medical admissions unit), one week in ITU (Intensive Care Unit) and one week in GP. The most exciting of those weeks was the first week back. In MAU I got to be the first one to clerk (take history and examine) the patients and also get my thinking hat on and comprehend what is wrong with them and why they might have the symptoms and signs they are presenting with. I have had a long break from clinical thinking and coming up with differential diagnosis was not easy at the beginning, but it got easier! Every patient in MAU was challenging even from the simple chest pain of a cardiac patient to the confusion of a stroke patient who was not able to give you a history! At the same time every patient was exciting and inspiring as it helped in stimulating my interest in my discipline. After I had seen a few patients I would go and read up on their case hoping that if I see a patient with the same presentation I would be able to diagnose them with confidence!

At most times you wish a patient was a typical textbook patient as that would have made your job easy! But that's hardly ever the case! Nobody has the typical textbook presentation but textbooks are good for some form of direction. In MAU, I managed to see a lot of chest pain, which helped in learning the Acute Coronary Syndrome pathway but also some overdoses, a pulmonary embolism (PE), a sickle cell crisis and a few stroke patients. It was a relatively good week and I managed to learn a lot in a relatively short period of time.

Then, it was ITU. I thought that would be a relatively interesting week and since I am interested in Anaesthetics I wanted to be positive about it. However, it did not go as smoothly and I did not feel I was learning a lot. I was impressed by the amount of Physiology someone needs to know to be able to work in ITU. However, dealing with very ill patients is rather depressing on most occasions. Furthermore, I felt like I was lost with all the machines they were using for organ support and all the high-tech equipment they were using. Also, some therapeutic pathways used for the very ill in hospital are beyong understand and explanation. I did manage to learn basic things and enjoyed being taught by the Consultant Anaesthetist on ITU for the week. However, I am not sure if this put me off from following Anaesthetics in the future or whether it actually stimulater my interest in it. I need to have a think about that.

The main thing I learned in ITU related to organ support and how to support someone who is very septic and cannot breathe, his kidneys are non functional. I learned a lot on Blood Gases and renal failure as well as SEPSIS. Furthermore, I learn about the 'Swiss Cheese Effect ' , where lack of communication and team working has led to fatal accidents in the aviation industry but it is something that is happening in the NHS but nobody bothers to do something about it or set a few rules to increase safety and efficiency in the medical profession.

After those two stimulating weeks of hospital medicine, there comes the time for GP and mainly family medicine. I was never very enthusiastic about doing GP and I was proved right! My GP was a nice man, Cambridge graduate, but seemed to think that by just sitting behind him and just shadowing or watching/observing I would learn by 'reverse osmosis'. This in itself can be nice for most medical students as they think they can sit back and relax and enjoy the show! but it was not working for me! I did learn a few things partly as I like reading on different illness and increase my knowledge but in terms of practical skills such as examination etc I did not manage to practise those.

This week is another GP week where I hope I have a more active role in the practise but not sure whether that would happen . I pray and hope that this week will be much more stimulating without being stressful at the same time! Wish me luck and thanks for reading my first blog !