Scott’s Spiel

December already, it’s been such a quick year. This means I now have to accept that Christmas is near and should probably make more of an effort on the present front. It also means I have to open my two advent calendars (neither of which I bought!). Guess I’m going to be taking my running stuff home with me…

Now that I’ve actually spent some proper time with St Andrews I get an understanding of the real disadvantage that must plague ambulance staff. Whilst we can do a lot for things like cuts and stuff, we never really know what happens to people afterwards. Take a suspected fracture. Did the guy go to A&E and get it seen to? Was it even a fracture? Will he be playing this weekend? I don’t know whether it’s medical curiosity or just general need-to-know that makes this bug me. Kind of makes me wonder whether I could deal with working in A&E or not.

At the end of the day though, I don’t have any choice but to move on. The more serious the casualty though, the more I want to know.

In other news, I only have 1 more day to go! This is followed however by 2, maybe 3, nights out. I’m having a real problem enjoying nights out this year. I don’t know whether I’m just bored of people there or if I don’t see the point in getting quite so drunk quite so often. Who knows, but I feel compelled to go anyway.

Block 8 coursework was handed in on Tuesday. I wasn’t ecstatic that it was my best work but I feel it was a pass at least. We get our Block 7 results this Friday, which will either put me in a good or bad mood for the rest of the holidays. Oh the fun.

So this is what my eyes currently look like. It’s not the greatest photo but I think you can still clearly see the difference in pupil size. Something like this would probably be taken as a sign of some quite bad problems in a patient. Thankfully however, this was brought on by the wonderful actions of tropicamide (0.5% - an antimuscarinic for all those that care).

Basically the point of lab this morning (possibly the best in a while) was to get us to use ophthalmoscope for the first time. This involved making everyone having one very dilated eye and the other with which to examine someone else’s very dilated eye. I now want an ophthalmoscope, purely because it’s the best thing I’ve used since a tendon hammer. Unfortunately they start at £80 so probably not until I actually need it.

The downside of one dilated eye and one responsive is that reading/writing or anything involving near vision (the pupils should contract for near vision but the tropicamide paralyses the ciliary muscles responsible for this) was quite blurred and is only now coming back (2-3 hours later).

I’ve also finished my coursework (rejoice!) which was all about monoamines (again, for those who care). This means I can probably go to the rugby tomorrow as well as Hampden, providing I get my uniform and kit bag today.

Yes, that does mean I got my first choice for SSM. Huzzah!

This has possibly been one of the best days I’ve had in the last nth weeks. Last night I stayed late in the SL to get my PBL finished, which I managed. I also found time to go into town and look like a complete twat carrying around a bear from Make a Bear. The bear was for our VS tutor who is leaving after Christmas (to have a baby).

Today then I went into VS trying to disguise the quite large box containing a teddy bear. I managed it though and she seemed quite taken aback by it, which is always nice. In the meantime we did some more neurological exams, which I’m quite happy with now. It’s a good job too because next week I’m going (back) to Hairmyres to try it out on some proper patients. This should probably act as a warning to any potential musculoskeletal/neurological patients in Lanarkshire (who I’m sure frequent this blog) to avoid going to hospital next Thursday morning.

After VS I came home for a semi-decent lunch before going for, shock horror, a swim! It’s been so long since I’ve had a couple of hours fully free and was quite nice to just swim for some time.

I then went up to the library and managed to find my way around the cataloguing system to get a nice bit of light reading. Whilst there some older (I’d go early 30s) guy was very confused at the cataloguing system and really couldn’t find his book. After miss-hearing “psychology” for “physiology” and sending him on an extra hunt in the totally wrong place, I found out he wasn’t even looking in the right part of the floor. Poor guy eventually found his book and went back up to “where he belongs”.

Now I’m going to feast on my £1 cheesecake before having to get up early for my second Family Project visit. I tried to phone them to check that it was still OK for us to visit. However I only left a message and I don’t think she has my phone number. Hopefully she’ll get the message and be expecting us, how dreadful would a surprise visit be!

Exciting times. Unlike first year when you do one chest examination and a bit of musculoskeletal stuff, second year feels a lot more “proper”. So far we’ve done a musculoskeletal screening test known as GALS and have gone over the basics of a neuro exam. Compared to first year it actually feels that we’re proper medical students. The timetable for all this vocational skills (VS) stuff is pretty busy. Next week we’ve got more neuro (plus a bit of CPR which should be easy enough for me) followed the week after by doing it on patients for real. At the moment we learn it on each other which is relatively save. Sadly our tutor is leaving us before Christmas. Considering she is probably the most organised person I’ve met yet on the course, I’m quite gutted about this. Hopefully we’ll get someone equally decent to replace her.

SSM deadline has been extended due to IT problems (which seems to be a recurring theme in medicine these days). My top choice (intro to pain management) currently has 20 people picked it as a first choice for 16 spots. How they decide who gets it we don’t really know, but the word on the street is that it is completely random. Compared to probably the most popular - addictions, which has 4 slots and over 25 first choices - I’ve got a fairly good shot of getting it. Hopefully find out on Monday. Hopefully.

Scotland vs. Italy tomorrow. We need to win to qualify. I’m not a betting person, but I can’t see us pulling this one out of the hat. If we do though, I’ll be very pleased. Since it’s playing at Hampden the whole of Glasgow seems to have gone manic. Scotland flags are a popular site outside of windows etc. I can’t help but wonder where I’d be watching it if my Disclosure was back now but I’ll have to settle for a local pub instead. Sad thing is I have noone really to go with.

So I was quite surprised today by an email letting us know that the SSM1 choices were going up at 4pm and we had to select the ones we were interested in by 5pm on Friday. Unlike previous years there was no first-come-first-served policy (apparently) so no need to rush and pick them. I did that anyway.

We have to select 6 ranking them in preference from a list of about 20. My top preference is “An introduction to pain management” which is vaguely clinical and quite interesting. It only has 16 spots though so whether I get it or not is a different matter. My 2nd is an anatomy SSM which has 56 slots so if I don’t get the pain one I’ll hopefully get that. If not (gulp!) my 3rd is something about viruses. If that falls through (major gulp!) I could be doing Spanish or French or finally RBC antigens. The languages was quite a brave attempt for me, as I really dislike them. However, it’s useful at least so I wouldn’t mind doing them if I have to. Spanish was first as I know a little French already and my parents don’t know any Spanish (which was always a reason for not enjoying French!).

Have no idea when we actually find out what we’re doing. I’m hoping next week but I can’t see it happening. We don’t do this SSM till February so I was quite impressed with this organisation from the medical school. It’s certainly a change.

SRC interview tomorrow. At a difficulty on what I should wear. Probably end up going formal, though I don’t like it. Could be employed by my next blog post. Isn’t that scary!

As I’m currently internetless in my flat, this is quite a delayed post but never mind.

Freshers 07 is now over. Unfortunately I had to pull out as being a Freshers’ helper so I could go home and take the bloody dog out. Hopefully I’ll manage to do it next year, who knows. I’ve also been thinking about the SRC job again (read back if you’ve no idea what I’m on about). They last said in June that the interview would be postponed as it was difficult to find a date which suited everyone. Having not heard anything since, I was assuming that this meant probably September time since the Uni would be back to full activity. I’m also hoping that they’d wait till Freshers’ was over as it’s quite a busy time for the SRC. If that’s the case, then I should be hearing about it soon. However it’s also possible that someone else got it and that’s why I’ve heard bugger all over the summer. If I don’t hear by the middle of October I’m going to go with the latter.

It’s great to be back and seeing people again and my worry about everyone’s great escapades across the globe weren’t as bad as I was thinking. I’m just gonna suck it up and hope the in a while it won’t be quite so big a deal.

On the other hand we (finally) got our PBL groups and timetable for next year. I’m now in group C (previously group A) which means I get the horrible 3-5pm PBL slot over with quickly. I recognise maybe one person in my PBL group which should make it interesting. We’re also out on day 2 shadowing a FY1 doc somewhere which I’m quite impressed about. Don’t know yet where or which department but as long as I’m not too far out I won’t mind. The “group presentation” on Friday of week 0 has me a little worried though, I’m very much hoping it’s someone putting on a presentation for us rather than the reverse. The more I think about it the more sure I get that we’ll be doing the presentation. Yay.

Finally, the iPod Touch! Since we now have an Apple store in Buchanan St (which is awesome) I managed to get a quick play with the iPod Touch yesterday. The screen is impressive and the touch sensitiveness I could get used to eventually. I tried reading my emails using the wifi and had no complaints. Overall though, it is very expensive for what it is. Priced at £199 it almost competes with the iPhone’s £269 (ignoring contract, activation, yadda). Other simple things bugged me about it too, like the fact you can’t add in calendar events, you must do that through iTunes. I don’t think I’ll be getting one soon, hopefully the price will drop a bit when the iPhone comes out. Judging by the fact the Apple store was sold out in 3 days, that might be wishful thinking more than anything else.

Don’t get a BT line till a week on Monday, then we have to wait for broadband so who knows when the next post will be. Possibly next week complaining about the presentation I have to give on Friday. Gah!

Finally got the chance to look over my communication skills video of my interviewing an angry mother (actually an actor). Basically, the story went that she’d discovered that her (15 year old) daughter had been prescribed the Pill. Rather than talking to her daughter about all this she stormed down to her GPs to find out what the hell the doc though he was doing, contraceptions of all things - “I mean she’s only 15!”.

Out of the 5 actors I could’ve picked that day, this was probably the worst. However, being the model student I am I’ve decided to learn from this event. Here follows my rules (in no particular order) for dealing with angry mothers with Pill-taking 15 year old daughters:

1. Apologise. They like that. Something such as “I’m sorry to see you’re upset about this”.
2. Be careful with confidentiality. Can’t even tell them whether their daughter attended the practice or not.
3. Never ever interrupt the ranting mother. If they really want to talk for minutes on end, let them. Follow by #1.
4. Explain, in general terms (watch #2) things like Gillick competence. The criteria for prescribing contraception to those under age (aka Fraser guidelines) are:
   1. the young person will understand the professional’s advice;
   2. the young person cannot be persuaded to inform their parents;
   3. the young person is likely to begin, or to continue having, sexual intercourse with or without contraceptive treatment;
   4. unless the young person receives contraceptive treatment, their physical or mental health, or both, are likely to suffer;
   5. the young person’s best interests require them to receive contraceptive advice or treatment with or without parental consent.

   Tell the mother these. First, make sure you know them (which I didn’t).

5. Don’t ask pointless questions about the mother.
6. Don’t accuse her of not being available to her daughter.
7. Don’t smile or laugh. Seriously, that’s a big no no.
8. Try not to think of the 8 people watching on camera who will probably be in fits of laughter. Should help with #7.
9. Do try and find out about the kind of mother/daughter relationship.
10. Do let her speak to the doctor at some point. She probably isn’t chuffed to be lumped with a medical student. Try not to take too long about this. The quicker you finish, the quicker she’s shouting at someone else.
11. If possible, try and get her to not shout at you or someone else.
12. Even better, try and get her to avoid throwing her handbag at you. All physical contact is something to avoid. Thankfully, actors aren’t likely to take a swing at students, even in Glasgow.
13. <more?>

I can feel the CPD (“holistic commitment to structured skills enhancement and personal or professional competence”) people idolising this post.

Hopefully I’ll do a better job when it’s not an actor.

It’s true, I passed! Quite a delayed post, since I got the results almost 2 weeks ago. My final grade was a C for the written paper. This is pretty terrible compared to my performance in 6th year and compared to my flatmates. However (feeling the need to defend myself) this would be around 70%, not 50% which is what my mum was thinking. Regardless of the grade, I made it to year 2 and that’s what matters. Now the fun really begins. The results turned up at a reasonable time on Monday, so I wasn’t left waiting while I was working.

The MILE resit came back a few days later. Thankfully it was a pass as well although had I done the same for my first attempt it would have been a B instead of a D.

As with the Applicant’s Day that I helped out with at the end of last year I also went to the first Open Day. By a sharp contrast this was a lot busier and I only got a break when they were holding a talk on admissions. I total I took around 40 about the medical school on a tour but had to leave early as I was working. When we had around about 4 tours on at once each with at least 10 people, you get the idea of how big the turn-out was. The second years had decided to show off some of the more intriguing toys in the clinical skills such as Little Annie and something like the above. That one certainly got a few interesting looks but nobody seemed keen on getting stuck in, so to speak.

Had the house to myself last week which was certainly a breath of fresh air. Everyone’s back now and it really didn’t feel like a week. The folks turned up a day earlier than expected and that was quite a shock to my plans, but luckily nothing too serious.

It was my last day of work on Thursday which means I now have nothing to do during the day. That is, of course, until I’m forced into actually working by my parents. Although, the way the keep moaning about lack of money I’m going to be glad to be out of the house as much as possible. They’re acting like we’re going to need to cut down on electricity supply just to be able to survive.

And now the argument is over who gets the computers and who gets the TV. Honestly, I want to get back to Glasgow. Next week though my flatmates are going to view the flat that I picked on my own. I can’t pretend I’m not nervous about it all. I can barely remember the flat at all. Hopefully it’s better than I think I remember it, that way we might not have any arguments about it. Yeah…right. At least it’ll finally be over. Besides, the location is excellent - merely a few hundred yards from University Avenue.

A few geeky posts coming up, as soon as I work out what I was going to write. Still no word from the SRC on the IT job. Grr…

I had such high expectations of this week on Monday morning. Sadly, it didn’t deliver.

Exam results, being the most important, were either going to be out Today or Monday. Earlier the better, I was hoping to get it over with but sadly we have to wait till Monday. Not even just that, but “before 5pm” on Monday. Great - is that 9:05 or 4:55? I’m working 2:45 - 6, which I have a strong feeling will cause problems. It’s also my brother’s birthday so as soon as I get in I’ll be straight back out for a meal. Hopefully I’ll get enough time to boot up WebSURF, but I don’t know whether I’ll really want to. Not heard anything about the resit either, unless I’ve failed that and my grade hasn’t changed…

SRC IT job has also been left lying. I was expecting a least a bit of info. Perhaps they’ll wait till September to do interviews…I don’t know.

I am, however, going to be doing a Standard First Aid course in August. This may then lead on to me joining St Andrews Ambulance, which would be great pre-hospital experience (emergency med is still a loud voice in my head after year 1). Even if emergency med isn’t for me, there’s nothing like a bit of volunteer work on a CV. The course is 6 hours for 4 Sundays, which is quite a nice way to do it. Unlikely to clash with any possible work that I might happen to have (HA!).

I will (as I keep telling myself) try and fill out another phlebotomy job application this week. It’ll be into July before I hear (if I do this time) and probably into August before they let me loose. I don’t know how this would clash with an IT job, probably need to drop one or the other. At the moment though I have neither so don’t really need to worry about it.

I’ve found a new blog which I like - The Paramedic’s Diary. It’s exactly what the name suggests - a diary of the job of a London paramedic (originally from Paisley) without the constant politcal spiel found in other medical blogs. It’s also updated very frequently, which is more than I can say about my own, though I am trying.

I’m getting slightly bored of Stirling already, which can’t be a good sign. I get the house to myself in just over a week though which might remind me a bit more like being back in Glasgow - parent’s are quite a shock when you’ve been away from them for a while. I’ve also started eating a lot more and a lot of crap, which means all that fat I lost over the last year will end up back where it was. Sigh.

Yesterday was a great day on all counts.

First, the papers were pretty simple and I’ll be major disappointed if I’ve failed, which I don’t think I have. Both papers were a bit unexpected though, hardly any diabetes considering we spent about 5 weeks going over and over it. Either way, it’s done! Thank god.

As soon as I got out the hall after the second paper I went straight to a flat viewing about 5 minutes away. This was a tough one as my other two flatmates were both away places and I had to make the decision to get it or not on my own. I had help from my current flatmate who refuses to live with us next year, much to our disappointment. In the end we went for it, which is quite scary. They could do no more viewings this week so if we didn’t get it we really would have no where. It’s not that bad either, the location is particularly excellent. Has a huge lounge, decent sized bedrooms and a reasonable kitchen. Bathroom is a bit on the smaller side but I’m sure we’ll manage. None of us are particularly fat so it shouldn’t be a problem. Can’t really describe it any better than that, so I’ll wait until I can get in and take some pics. Don’t get it till August 1st so that’ll be a while away.

Also got an email concerning interview for the SRC IT coordinator position I applied for. Couldn’t make the interview (Monday 6pm!) as I’m working in Stirling. Hopefully they’ll be able to find one which suits.

The MILE resit today went as good as I think it can. I’ve ended up with more pages of references than actual report but I guess that’s what they’re after. Noone has failed this resit in 10 years and hopefully I won’t be the first. Need to hand it in tomorrow morning before 9:30, then I’m going swimming cause I haven’t been for ages.

After that I’m going to clear the absolute mess of my room. Then I may just sit in the park and do nothing…excellent!

I’ve finished first year, bring on year 2!