Scott's Spiel

As has been pointed it has been a (really) long time since I made a post.

So what’s been happening?

I’ve finished neonatal medicine, now switched completely to old-age psychiatry. As I will frequently mention I have no aspirations as a future psychiatrist. So this should be a bit of a nightmare for me. Thankfully it’s not quite that bad. Compared to my last block I’ve got a lot more free time to spend (mainly sleeping). Unlike the last block I have to write up roughly 1 case a week. I’m still trying to get used to that. Most others in my year have been doing this for a couple of blocks already. No idea what will happen when someone actually sits down to read these!

Working in an old-age ward is leading me to question the cognitive abilities of my family. I’m questioning whether I can really give them an assessment as a Christmas present?

First aid has again become an increasing part of my free time. Not quite what it once was but for some reason I seem to enjoy it. Maybe I’m just strange, but there you go. Glasgow on Ice is back and I’m spending a few evenings there. Hopefully the rain will eventually stop and we’ll get proper winter weather.

I should probably take this opportunity to mention the efforts the British Red Cross has contributed to the Cumbria flooding. A substantial amount of the rescue equipment and teams has travelled down from Northern Scotland to help. Unfortunately the regular media hasn’t really given much mention to BRC. The same should be said of the International Rescue Crops who are another voluntary agency responding to some considerable disasters in and out of the UK. Personally I hadn’t even heard of these guys until my major incidents module and was quite surprised to hear what they can do. Plus, given the origins of their name, I was quite interested in them. If you haven’t heard of them either, go have a look at what they do.

Not trying to become a complete charity case but it is impressive that there are people out there who respond to such incidents without even a bit of worry about recognition.

Closer to home I’ve recently been involved in the admissions committee for applicants in 2010. I don’t want to mention too much of it here since it is an ongoing process but I will probably spend a bit of time on the UKCAT in the near future. Interviews started today (I believe) so good luck to those who have them!

Unfortunately I’m quite a big X Factor follower. Personally I’m a Joe or Stacy fan, simply because they can sing. Loved Lucie, sad to see her go. It’s worryingly close to the final now, which means it’s almost Christmas. Shopping? Done none of that! Tomorrow is fortunately pay day so I should maybe start thinking about it.

That’s quite a good bit of catching up. I’ll try in future to do some smaller posts more frequently. Even though I say this it probably won’t happen.

Despite having completed 1/10th of my final teaching blocks left before I (hopefully) graduate, I haven’t really done much medicine yet. The start of this week seems to have changed all that. Yesterday was one of my longest days since exam revision. Somewhere along the lines of:

8am – leave flat

9am-12pm – Interprofessional stuff with the pharmacists (was better than expected, think I had a lucky group)

12pm – Lunch & walk back to the west end

2pm-5pm – Radiology lectures >.<

5:05pm – Grabbing a chocolate bar

5pm-?pm – Lecture on more major incident stuff & debrief of recent exercise

6pm – Red Cross meeting

6:45pm – Time I actually left other meeting to go to Red Cross meeting

7:50pm – Time I left Red Cross meeting

8:15pm – Home

All in all, that’s a lot for someone who’s been in for a couple of hours a week for the past month. Sadly I seem to like days that are busy and I worryingly hope it’ll be like that for a while starting tomorrow.

I’m expecting a lot from this next block (neonates). I’m hoping to try and get an audit completed since this is a common thing post-qualification and I’ve done nothing of the sort so far. There is also a bit of hope that I can experience some of the neonatal transport in the West…we’ll see.

Out of Uni I’ve been busy 1) trying to get an update of my IPB mod released, 2) doing some first aid for the Red Cross and 3) trying to produce some sort of fancy booklet for a conference. Not to mention sorting out what I’m doing for my elective. All this whilst going to the gym as frequently as I can (I’ve become a fan of the 8-9am slot!). To counter my gym habits I’ve become a keen baker too, serving a batch of cookies into work last weekend.

Kind of means this blog is being abandoned (sorry!) but I’ll keep doing the best I can.

As I mentioned on my earlier post I was looking for a car which I eventually found a week and a bit ago. It’s a nice cheery red Nissan Micra:

Not perfect, far from it, but one that should last me a little while anyway. Or so I thought, anyway, until this morning when the thing refused to start. I’ve just tried it again and, although very close, still no joy. I don’t know if the fair bit of rain yesterday has cause it or whether I’m just unlucky but either way it’s rather annoying. Very annoying this morning infact, since I had to go get money for a taxi to get to work.

Take it back, try and fix it, I don’t know. Guess this is the welcome message from the car owners club. Sigh.

For my 21st birthday last week (which I forgot to blog about) the plan is to get a car. Particularly useful since I’m now going into 4th year and for my first (proper) block I’ll need to be at Inverclyde frequently. I also kind of need it for work at the weekend. Managed to get completely soaked on Sunday in the supposed summer weather.

Unfortunately, finding a car isn’t as simple as it should be. Conditions are:

• Under £1k
• Ideally under 100k miles
• Ideally not much older than 10 years
• MOT with a good few months left
• Not French (no offence, they’re just rubbish cars)
• Within about 40 miles from here

I’ve got August to try and find one, seen a few that I quite the look of but aren’t great. Hopefully I’ll get one soon, will get some nice pics of it for here when I do.

It will soon be the end of my elective and I will be returning home for the month of August. As such, I’ll be looking at filling my time hopefully by gaining a bit of money in the process. This basically means I’m looking to do a bit of work for around a months duration (obviously it can be less).

The types of things I’d be keen to get involved with include:

• General web programming (PHP/MySQL mainly)
• WordPress based sites (looking at anything from plugins, modifications or SEO improvements)
• Web hosting companies (support over sales ideally, live and/or ticket)
• Computer hardware repair/upgrade/builds
• Computer software installations/clean ups
• At a push – any phlebotomy work

The first 3 I would be happy dealing with anyone around the globe although I’m limited to the English language. The bottom 3 are more location specific, I’m based in Stirling, Scotland and I wouldn’t be too keen to travel far for these.

I have written up some information regarding previous experience in these areas, which I would suggest reading.

Anyone interest should contact me at scott@scott-h.com. Anyone who would prefer to call me, drop me an email and we’ll see what we can arrange.

Back in April I was booked in to go on a helicopter trip over the Forth Bridges in Edinburgh. Since that was unfortunately cancelled I ended up going last Saturday. Took quite a few pictures, some of my favourites being the following.

It was quite a smooth ride overall. It went rather quick as well. Certainly felt like a small child again and I was quite lucky to get such a nice day for it. Well recommended but I’d suggest going for something a bit longer.

See the full album.

I passed!

Apparently I find out on July 1st what’s happening intercalated wise.

Forth Bridges from helicopter

Great picture! Just the kind of thing you’d see on a helicopter tour. Just like mine this morning.

Except, it was cancelled.

Apparently due to low cloud, although I’m about 30 miles away and it’s blue sky here.

Oh well, day off work to relax…and write some rubbish essay.

It’s not unusual – I go home or manage to meet up with my family. I’ll usually be presented with a “present” in the form of a cut or bruise from my brother or sister. More recently I’ve had the joy of a rash. These are generally trivial and more of a joke than any serious test of what I’ve learned.

Move up a few generations and things are a bit different. Here I have statins, B-blockers and ACE inhibitors of all sizes. I get updated on any recent changes (whether I want to know or not) and spend a bit of time trying to work out what the trade name actually is. This is fine, I’m (sadly) quite interested in this. I stop myself from making any real comments though – save maybe trying to explain what the drug does. Anything beyond that 1) I tend not to know and 2) don’t want to treat my family anyway.

Unfortunately my restraint doesn’t seem to be shared by my peers. The most recent example of this was one of my colleagues explaining to a relative the findings of a new study. The relative was told they “probably don’t need to be on it” and that it “has these new problems”. More annoyingly, my friend was planning to send the article so that it could be taken to their relatives GP who “might not have seen it”.

I have no doubt that evidence based medicine isn’t practiced as well as it possible could be but this concerns me for different reasons. Firstly, treating family members is not exactly recommended, even by those fully qualified. More than that, however, is the poor GP who is going to be presented with a BMJ article that the patient was told to bring.

It’s confusing for the patient and annoying for the GP. I don’t like it.

This isn’t an isolated incident either. I’ve heard of younger students advising about post-stroke medication for example.

Perhaps we should be taught about where our limits should be as students? I can think of a few sessions that this could fit into.

Snow - From my window

This was the view from my window today. Whilst it wasn’t particularly bad up here England seems fairly paralysed by the snow.

However, I only had 1 class on today. The problem is this happened to be PBL at the hospital, a 30 minute train trip away. That is, of course, after I get to the station which requires a 15 minute walk.

I have no real problem walking in snow and I knew the train was running so I was pleased to turn up to PBL on time. Out of the 12 of us in the group, 6 started at 9am this week and were all waiting. From the remaining 6 only 1 other was already there. We began the process, full in the knowledge that the remaining 4 almost never turned up on time (a different post!). Expecting to see them stumble in around half past I was astonished to finish (after only an hour, heh) without them either turning up or letting us know.

Who cares?

Pretty much nobody. They’ll have to explain their absence – assuming it even gets logged – but then what? If we had waited for them, we’d be giving up our time to ensure they get some benefits. If they had turned up we’d be expected to update them on what had been said – we’d still be losing time.

I’m not going to admit I attend everything perfectly but if snow is the excuse, and it probably will be, I’d be pretty annoyed. They all get transport and my 45 minute trip would probably take them closer to 20 – for free too – it just makes my effort seem pointless.

I’ve got 2 of them tomorrow for GP, will they show?

Will it snow?

We’ll see.