Done and done!

Well, we are done for the year!

The exam was okay, but really a little non-specific. Thus, whether or not I pass or do brilliantly depends entirely on the marking guide and who looks at my paper.

One of the questions asked us to draw a diagram illustrating the rule of 9s in burns. I feel a little embarrassed that I didn't memorise that one prior to the exam. At least I remembered that the genital area is worth 1% and that the back and front are 9% each (I think). Meh.

Without being immodest, I studied really hard for this one - harder than for any of the other areas. I don't know if it paid off for the exam, but at least I now know a lot more about surgery than I would have otherwise, and feel much more prepared for internship and to be a doctor. After all, isn't that what really matters?

Hopefully we will find out soon whether or not we need a resit. I think my paper would get through a remark if it doesn't pass muster first time. Plus, I don't think I can learn any more than I did, so even if I do need a resit, it won't involve 12 hours of study a day.

Hooray! Bring on Christmas and fourth year!

Study Bunny

I am working my way through multiple textbooks and now the School of Medicine's Voice-Over-Powerpoint presentations.

The surgeons have put some serious effort into these, and they are really good. I'm impressed. :)

In three days time I will be finished third year. Even if I have to repeat surgery (which I would like to think is unlikely), I'll be a fourth year as of next year.

I have been focusing on taking things step by step the whole way this year, so this feels like it has come along really quickly. While I'm excited for the other bloggers and my friends who are finishing fourth year, part of me is still glad that I have another year to consolidate and learn more before I get that MBBS added onto my name.

I have learned so much this year that it is astounding, and I'm looking forward to learning more next year, too. Plus, we get to do paediatrics, emergency and O&G (which I think I get two of due to my med spec choice), which I'm thoroughly looking forward to.

So close!

So close

I did the take-home exam this afternoon. With the aid of Apleys Concise Textbook of Orthopaedics, and my favourite mentor, Dr Google, I think I passed this one.

Now for the big, nasty exams at the end of next week - the ones that people don't go so well in. I have worked hard this time, so my fingers are crossed.

I just need enough energy to get over the line and it will all be happy dancing and pixies, at least until results come out.

Ploughing on

It has been a week and I feel like I should write another post.

Surgery continues to be trying. I like the staff, but there are so many demands on our time. This would be merely inconvenient by itself, but we also have a large exam looming next week which is well known for its high failure rate.

More than half of the previous group who went through needed to either get their papers remarked or resit a section of the exam.

I am working hard at studying, and have been for the whole rotation, but I hold no illusions. I'm going to walk into this one assuming that it isn't going to be marked so that I'll pass.

In a way, this takes the edge of my anxiety, but makes me cynical and exhausted at the same time. I want to spend my holidays having a break from being a medical student, not studying for a supplementary exam. Oh well. Fingers crossed.

Enough

I have really and well and truly had enough of surgery rotation.

If it was just being in the ward and doing ward work and assisting in theatre, it would be fantastic.

It is all of the rest of the crap that I have had enough of.

Just bring on these stupid exams already. I want them done.

Stupid times - when stupid ideas succeed

Tradition has it that there is a curse - "May you live in interesting times."

I don't know what we did in order to deserve the current state of affairs, because proof shows that not only are we in interesting times, but we are in stupid times, too.

Weird stuff has been happening in the past couple of years that reminds me of the kind of things that would happen in the 1980s, and I now think that we live in a decade that is basically 1980s + technology.

For instance, this man, who lives off selling advertising on the front of his t-shirt. Anybody sensible would think that this is a stupid idea, that he needs to get a real job, and that his role in life as a walking billboard would not only fail, but be monumentally unsatisfying and contribute next to nothing to a society already filled to overflowing with the effluent of consumerism and greed.

It is a sign of the times that his business is expanding and he is making a solid profit.

See? It is like the 1980s. Bring back the 1960s, please. I have already lived through the 80s once. It is a shame that there is too much profit in it to force it to go away.

I'm not even talking about other stupid things, like vaccine conspiracy theories, the re-emergence of magnetic therapy, thermal imaging and sensible people being swept away in the flood of bullshit dressed up as fact that can drown the unwary on the internet.

It is the little things that really push us over the edge. It started with crocs. Well, maybe it didn't, but I blame crocs. Somebody came up with an idea for plastic shoes with holes in them, and it took off, and now everywhere I look, I see people who would otherwise be sensible individuals who are wearing the ugliest piece of footwear known to man.

Bare feet make me cringe, but not as much as crocs do.

In a million years when all there is left of the planet is plastic, aliens will arrive, point at the piles of crocs and work out that not only were they the cause of the downfall of civilisation, but that it was fortunate that we were already gone when they got here because creatures who create these have no place in an intelligent solar system.

Yes, I'm bitter. I blame surgery rotation. Bring back psychiatry and GP, please, I want to hang out with patients and talk about care plans, babies and not have to worry about five million eponymous syndromes, and wonder about who the hell Pott was and how he got so many nasty things named after him in amusing ways. (A peculiar tumour AND a puffy tumour? What a legend. If there is a question in the exam that I have no idea about, I will answer, "Percival Pott's puffy tumour.")

Surgery Rotation, start of Week 5

I am completely and utterly exhausted. Time to take a small break.

The problem with medicine is there is an infinite amount that you can try to study, and a finite amount of time and energy in the day.

Sometimes it does the world of good to take an evening off from study. Fingers crossed that I wake up feeling better tomorrow morning.

Surgery Rotation - End of Week 4

Surgery rotation is going well. We are being involved and learning things.

I'm glad that I already have skills like cannulation and phlebotomy under my belt from earlier in the year, as it is one less thing to be concerned about learning.

We are also at a slightly smaller hospital, so we get to scrub in and assist the registrar from time to time. I can actually enjoy a little bit of scrubbing in and assisting. After a while it wears thin, but I think I'll be alright with a bit of it in the next few weeks, and then maybe again when I'm an intern and need to help out.

There is nothing much new to add. I'm still trying to learn a lot (well, enough to get through) and work hard, because we have a lot to do during the week.

Today I helped out in preparing some second years for their MSAT exams (Multi-Station Assessment Task) and took part in a mock exam. It was quite fun and it really sank in just how far we have all come in the space of a year.

The students weren't bad (a few of them were lacking in confidence) but you can see that they REALLY need personal attention and teaching from people who actually know what they are doing. It is one thing to learn a technique from a list on a piece of paper, and another to actually see that technique demonstrated by an expert.

This is just the way medical school works. You spend the first two years learning the theory behind things, and then you get to see it in action and try to understand how it REALLY works in the following two years.

I always think that it is unfair when people expect you to know something that you haven't actually been taught, specifically when these things are practical skills that you can only learn when somebody who knows what they are doing passes these skills on.

One of the problems with the massive increase in class size in medical schools in this country is that we aren't getting the personal attention that we could have received in previous years. It just isn't logistically possible.

This isn't so bad when it is in the first couple of years of medical school, but the potential for there to be so many interns, residents and registrars that we don't get proper teaching is there and it is a horrifying thought.

My fingers are firmly crossed that it doesn't come to that, but you can't have a huge leap in graduate numbers in such a short space of time without the system failing at some point. I still think I'm ahead of the biggest increase in the next couple of years. Fingers crossed.

Surgery Rotation, End of Week 3

We have just finished our first week of general surgery, and I'm exhausted.

It is much more interesting than orthopaedics for me, mainly because there are so many medical issues involved with the patients. I'm not overly keen to scrub in, mainly because I don't find the process of surgery very interesting, and I would rather be free to wander the room (not to mention gossip with the nurses/anaesthetist/techs - maybe this is why I have never had a problem with theatre staff ;) ) rather than be tied to the sterile area with my hands tucked away or on the patient.

We have been doing longer hours than we were in orthopaedics, and even though we don't have a lot of responsibility, we can help out and run around and see a lot of things. There are also tutorials to prepare for and present, and assignments to write. Overall it is a pretty busy rotation.

I have also been cutting back on the amount that I'm eating. I'm trying to find the happy medium where I'm eating enough, but still eating less. I have lost quite a bit of the weight that I have put on since starting medicine over the past few months, and that has accelerated in the past two weeks since reading French Women Don't Get Fat.

It is amazing how many extra calories you can fit in by eating everything on your plate even after you are full, and by snacking in between meals. When you stop those things (if you do them), the weight just starts to come off by itself. You can still indulge in a little bit of everything, just in moderation. I'll always be a three-meals-a-day girl, and I'm addicted to breakfast.

Sadly, cutting down on calories and being in deficit also makes you a little bit more tired. Oh well. At least my pants fit better now. I am a happier person being a little tired rather than walking around in a skirt/pair of pants that are a little too tight.

Another strange thing has been happening to me all this week. I keep running into people I have worked with before in my former professional life, some of them for more than two years, and they don't recognise me at a glance as they walk by. It is really off-putting. I suspect it is the fact that I am in professional clothing rather than a uniform or scrubs. When it happens once, twice or even three times it isn't so bad. But when it happens continuously with just about every other person you worked with over the last two years of your working life - well, that is off-putting.

They recognise me when I stop them to say hello, which is nice. (I only do this when we are stopped for coffee or not going in opposite directions down a main corridor. I'm not that anxious for recognition!) Perhaps I just pay more attention to the people walking by me. It could also be that I'm excited to be back in the hospital I used to work in, so it is more than just another work day for me. It is nice to see them around.

Surgery Rotation, Week 3

Surgery is okay. I don't love it, but I find it interesting.

I wonder if this is how the people with whom I did my psych rotation felt about psychiatry?

We did our rotation at a hospital where they have good teaching for psychiatry, so a lot of the students enjoyed it, even though it isn't what they want to do.

I quite like the practical aspects of surgery. My brain works fairly well that way, too. I am just not a surgical person, if that makes sense. I want to be the one in the room talking to them about their depression because they have had chronic physical illness, not the one treating the illness with surgery.

Still, I'm enjoying the reading. I am also really enjoying the specifics. I like zeroing in on an area and concentrating on it. I'm not much of a lover of the general nature of GP or rural rotation. I can understand how other people would enjoy it, but it isn't for me.

I think I would be keener if it weren't so late in the year and I didn't feel so completely exhausted. Rural took it out of me even more, and I have noticed the exact same thing in the others around me.

Bleh. Almost there. I'm just grateful that I get a break at the end of the year. I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts.

Surgery Rotation, Week 1

Surgery has been interesting so far. I know it isn't for me, but I like the theory and reading about the pathologies. I have decided that surgery is really quite revolting. I'm talking about the object of surgery (blood, guts and other random body bits), not the actual surgeons or surgical process, although the process can be quite . . . disturbing. They do things to the human body that go against all of my instincts.

This says a lot about me, too - I am intuitive and empathetic, so watching orthopaedic surgery really goes against my grain. I don't feel sick, have seen a lot of it before in my previous life, but it just feels really wrong. I have been told that I am quiet and reserved (usually by pushy people who I don't like, so who knows if it applies elsewhere), and I don't run around the place hugging patients and wanting to be their friend, but I also don't like causing them pain. On an intellectual level, I know it is helping them, but on a gut-level, my inner voices says no.

I'm glad they don't show patients what a joint replacement looks like before they get one done. If I ever have to counsel a patient who is going to get a joint replacement, I would strongly advise against looking it up on You-tube, or there other video-sharing sites. If you hadn't seen much surgery before, and were watching a procedure that you were about to have done on your own body, it would terrify you!

The results are fantastic (when all goes well), and I am lucky enough to have seen this and spoken to the people who have had joint replacements change their lives and give them access to activities that they hadn't been able to do for years. It often goes so well with one joint that they leap in and get the opposite side done soon afterwards. It works, and is a great way to give people back their mobility. The actual process of performing the surgery isn't for everybody, and it isn't for me.

Psych is still at the top of my list of specialties I want to do. I try to attack the plan as critically as possible, because I don't want to leap in and then decide that it isn't for me, but at the end of mixing it all up, psychiatry still lands on top.

I have some nice friends who bear the brunt of this, and I hope they don't think I am too flippant or chaotic. Sometimes I worry a little that I do a big anxiety dump on them, and that is what it is - a huge vent. Hopefully they won't get sick of being a sympathetic ear. Sharing the load helps.

I really enjoy the content of psychiatry, I love talking to patients about their life experiences and what they are going through, and then analysing this and putting it all together in one huge concept of cause-and-effect and results that are open to change at any moment. I just kind of assumed that most people felt this way, but they don't. That is okay - it is a varied and interesting world, with room for surgeons and shrinks!