Yeah, I know I haven’t posted in a while, the truth is I have not much to talk about. Home is quite boring in comparison to Uni, in fact, it’s very boring. I’m fed up revising already, which isn’t good. I do get to drive again though, which I’m enjoying even if it is a crappy car.
Before the holidays I looked into being a First Aid volunteer with the British Red Cross. When I found out more about it I was surprised at the items I had to bring to an interview – birth certificate, references, photo ID – to name a few. I didn’t have most of this with me in Glasgow, so I put the interview on hold. After coming back here, I brought this up with a friend of my mum, and she encouraged me to do it. She’d even fill out a reference for me. So now I need to get the checklist of what I need (which I foolishly left in Glasgow) and get the interview done. Hopefully this will be quite a good way of getting some proper experience, lets see if my enthusiasm holds up.
Also found a new person to badger about phlebotomy. I’ll phone them if I haven’t heard anything by the time I get back after Easter. Not giving in on this one!
Speaking of badgers, The Apprentice is back tonight. (Last years runner-up was nicknamed badger…in case you think I’m loosing it). Should help with this boredom thing.
Since it’s been released, I’ve been using Google’s personalised home page to keep me in touch with the goings on in the world. I was quite entertained when it came up with this:
If you read the articles though it isn’t quite as impressive as it first looks, but it gave me a laugh anyway.
Not been up to much today. Spend most of the time trying to get a laptop and a desktop wirelessly networked to each other. Took many hours but kept me entertained.
House was back last night! Now on season 3, I hope it can keep up with the standards of the last season.
MTAS was back in the news today. The review group has decided that everyone should get an interview for their first choice specialty. The problem is they decided people should only get one interview. Not ideal, but they would probably have managed to get away with it had the done this before the start of MTAS. However, some people aready have more than one interview and under the changes they’ll have to choose. The specifics are due out next week, but I can’t see how this will work fairly. The BMA has pulled out of the review group because of this, which may lead the way for the Royal Colleges to do the same. Time will tell.
Meet Millie. I spent a fair bit of yesterday entertaining her. I never had a dog and always enjoy having one around even for a bit. Of course, now that I’ve left home my parents are looking at getting a dog, typical.
Yesterday was also Applicants’ day and I was giving people some tours. It wasn’t as busy as I was expecting but went quite well. Got to meet quite a lot of applicants, as well as other students. Mostly though, we were just waiting around for most of the day. Not sure whether the lack of people was because everyone was either happy they were or weren’t going to Glasgow and didn’t need to go, or they hadn’t had enough time to plan the trip.
In the evening, Mark had his planned Sunday roast. He had invited quite a few people, some of whom I’d never heard of. It was quite a good meal and I was surprised there was food left over. We spent most of the night arguing with Jason’s friend about his lifestyle (I’m not great at smoking cessation, but I like to think I stuck my ground). Was surprised how many people disliked dogs, and poor Millie was stuck in the hall.
Got back home today by noon and will probably procrastinate the rest of the holiday. My mum got a laptop (which I’ve stolen) and have been tweaking all day. I want a laptop but I’m looking more at the MacBooks, mostly because of my dislike for Windows. This thing came full of every bit of useless software you could possibly want. Might look at buying one when I get my next student loan lump.
No really, sun. In Glasgow. I’m not lying.
Terribly boring day today. I spent most of it cleaning (yawn). My room is nice and tidy now though, just need to do something with the rest of the flat. Someone has kindly left a shopping trolley in our corridor, which one of my flatmates (from now on called “Mark” – confidentiality practice 
) wants to incorporate into our already bursting collection of other roadside amenities. I’ll pass, thanks.
Applicant’s day tomorrow which I said I’d help with. I’m meant to wear red to identify with the people I know are going, but I have nothing (literally, nothing) red. Oh well, people will just have to be lucky to spot me.
Tomorrow night we’re having a “Sunday” roast. Yeah, I know it’ll be Tueday (I said the same thing) but I’m not complaining about having food made for me.
Wednesday I’m going home and for some peculiar reason my Gran is going to visit. I’ve already been passed by for football matches, so I’m guessing they must be bored around then. Either that or there is something(s) she needs help with. Or both. Yeah, more likely both.
Time to go watch a few DVDs and finish that tub of Ben & Jerrys.
I don’t know what the Scottish climate is smoking sometimes. It’s the middle of March and we get (our first this year?) snow fall. Unfortunately it’s soaking wet on the ground and it had no chance of staying.
Happy Mothers’ day by the way. I did send a card but apparently it hasn’t got home yet. Have no idea who decided this day should be on the one day there is no post.
Phoned the “informal contact” for the phlebotomy job on Friday to see what information I could get out of them. She was quite nice and was asking about what I knew about phlebotomy. In retrospect I should have maybe let her talk but instead I cut her off and told her I had applied. She said that my application was probably with recruitment or her and that once the current group who are training have finished, they’ll be looking for more people. No idea when this will be…we’ll just have to wait and see.
My aim this holiday is today as much revision as I can stomach. So far I’ve been drawing spider diagrams of the systems and jotting in what we’ve learned about them this year. This is my current one for the cardiovascular system:
I’m quite proud of it. Started one for respiratory today but didn’t get very far. I realised when I woke up this morning I had a bit of money which I could spend before I go home on Wednesday. So I bought series 1 of Life on Mars and ordered a pizza. I had been planning on going to Pizza Hut on Friday but this failed. My task now is to spend nothing before my train ticket home. May run into a problem here since I need £4.90 to get home and only have £4 sitting in front of me. Wonder how much the ticket office like 5p pieces.
Also got some Ben & Jerry’s ice cream which I’ll like gorge into tonight and free Cream Eggs, which I’ll save for when I get hungry again.
Happy St Partick’s Day to all those who celebrate it. I’m sure the Guinness is flowing in by now. Shame the weather is so miserable.
Today also happens to be the day that the junior docs are taking to the streets of London and Glasgow. The marches, organised by Remedy UK, are in protest of the recent shambles in the first run of MTAS for ST positions. I realise this means nothing to those who haven’t spent the hours into understanding the employment of doctors in the UK, so I’ll indulge in a brief explanation.
For a while now, the government has been saying we need more consultants. Everyone wants a consultant to be treating them, so we need more. Their way of increasing consultants was to make junior docs specialise earlier and provide more linear training model. The answer was Modernising Medical Careers (MMC), which looks a bit like this:
Nice and simple. When people leave medical school, they apply for Foundation posts. After 2 years of Foundation posts, they apply for a speciality training (ST) post which varies in the length. Successful completion of ST results in a Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT) allowing them to apply for consultant posts. That’s the basics to it. The problem is there has to be some way of moving all the current docs onto this new system. The way the government decided to do this was by making people reapply for what they might already being doing and start the new scheme fully in August 2007.
Being modern, computerised systems are the logical choices for applications. MTAS is the way junior docs now apply for posts. No CVs. Instead, you’re asked a few questions and they are the deciding factor whether or not you get an interview. When the deadline came for applicants to find out whether they got an interview or not, the good old computer system crashed. Thirty-thousand people is quite a lot for a system to handle. When people eventually discovered their results, many received no interviews. A number received 1 and few received more than 1. Those who received more than 1 often found them on the same day in opposite parts of the country. Those who received none were offered no feedback on why. It was quite a mess.
Then a group of consultants who were meant to be shortlisting candidates for interview refused to do so. Slight problem for the governement there and they ordered a review. What changes it will bring we’ll need to wait and see. But I wish luck to those junior docs who’re on the streets today…we don’t want to loose so many excellent doctors.
I hope this is an appropriate enough sum-up of what’s going on. I apologise to any readers who have a good knowledge of what’s going on and feel this is over simplified.
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You can see an initial report on the march at Dr Crippen’s blog.
Last “day” before the Easter holidays. I say “day” because we’re not really doing much, handing in coursework (see below) and talking about obesity. Likely followed by the pub (if I can afford it). These also aren’t really holidays, since most of the time will be spent revising (yay!). With so much covered, I have no idea where to start.
My Mum’s birthday was OK. Went out for a reasonably decent meal and she managed to moan several times that her new phone is black. Got back last night to write about obesity and just got into bed before the fire alarm went off. That thing is damn loud. Got up (thinking it was some idiot from up stairs), opened my room door to the sight and smell of smoke. Flatmate had apparently forgot about his burgers. No shit. Thankfully, there was no real fire but he failed to stop the fire brigade getting called out. They didn’t seem too bothered about it though. After they had cleared the building (the grill needs cleaned apparently, or watched at the very least), we still had to wait another 10-15 minutes for the key holder to come and shut the alarm off.
In all, it was an eventful evening, tonight should be a little different.
Finally, I got it done. Just over the 2k word count, but that’s OK. I was determined to get it done for tonight so I wouldn’t have to get up tomorrow and face finishing it. Now I can go and enjoy certain people’s birthdays only having to worry about how little money I’ll end up with.
In another note, Glasgow finally broke and gave out some precious offers. Thankfully, the person I wanted to get one did, so all is good. I’m helping out at the applicant’s day on Tuesday, kinda looking forward to meeting all the future 1st years.
Mum’s birthday tomorrow, so I’m out that night too. Year night out on Thursday. Goodbye for some people Friday. Probably more drinking Saturday…it’s a busy week.
Still not heard back from the phlebotomy job I applied for. I do wish they’d hurry up. Being on a ward today kinda reminded me how little experience I have of that and would love to do a little bit a week. We’ll see.
Time to go get some drink in me!
So I didn’t get up till after noon, but still got 1200ish words done out of 2000. Should get the rest finished on Tuesday/Wednesday. Now I’m off to watch Lost and wake up tomorrow to finish PBL. Yay!
The whole union plan kinda failed. We got to our friends flat, where we stayed for a fair bit, then decided maybe we should go and check out the closer union (Glasgow has 2!). We got their and, it being ned night, felt ridiculously overdressed. After about an hour, we we’re getting fed up, so left and made way to union #2. Halfway up the hill, someone had the excellent idea of going back to the flat instead…via some shops obviously. Come 4am, we weren’t feeling too keen on walking home. I ended up getting back about 11:30.
Being the energetic (and rather unfit) person that I am, I decided to go for a run to fill in some time. I already knew I was going out for food tonight so I wanted to make some room. I was quite pleased with my time, hopefully if it’s a good day tomorrow I’ll try and push myself a little further.
Food tonight was at the wags, an excellent place to go if you’ve never been. It’s a Japanese noodle bar and reasonably priced at that. I ate lots, and have chocolate fudge cake to finish off. No idea where I’m getting this money from.
After, we headed into the Merchant City (see pic), and found a rather expensive looking cocktail bar. It was rather expensive. Did enjoy my damn good cocktail though.
This pretty much brought the epic night to a close. Now I have to wake up tomorrow and start on the write up of the presentation. Argh.
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