Scott’s Spiel

This is the start of my 3rd teaching week back at Uni and, to be honest, I’m still a bit bored. The problem is my current Student Selected Module (SSM) which last for the first 5 weeks of teaching. The term “Student Selected” is slightly inappropriate as this SSM - cardiovascular science (or heart stuff) - was actually my 5th choice out of the possible 6.

Unfortunately my higher choices were all a bit too popular. Top of my list was “Resuscitation to Recovery” which would’ve simply been awesome. However only 2 students can fit into this one with somewhere around 50 of us selecting it as our first choice. I would’ve settled for my 4th choice quite happily (Clinical Pharmacology) but I guess I had put that just a tad too low down.

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I got an interesting email a few days ago looking for 3rd-5th years (oh boy, that’s me!) who have a valid First Aid certificate and would be happy to help out with teaching first years some first aid. The content is to include:

• Responsibilities of being a first Aider
• Personal Safety
• Regulations and Legislation
• Action at an emergency
• Assessing a casualty- primary and secondary survey
• Recognition and treatment of Hypovolaemic shock
• Fainting

Not a bad list (although not quite a comprehensive course) and it’s a big improvement from the maybe 30 minutes CPR that has been the norm for the last few years. It’s not clear whether CPR is actually included in the above (primary survey?) or how much will be practical work compared to lecture based.

Because I’m interested in this kind of thing and because I seem to be a tool for volunteering I’ve already agreed to help. Now I just need a timetable…

…ha!

I meant to post this yesterday, but I’ve become quite interested in WordPress that it slipped my mind a bit. Plus, I had to leave not long after the results came out (which they didn’t until about 5:30pm!).

In the big picture, I’m now in 3rd year :D! While this is kind of all that really matters at the end of the day, I was a little bit disappointed with the results. I felt it had went better than it obviously did, which I don’t like. That said, a number of people have failed that I really would’ve expected so in a way I’m being a bit unfair moaning at my pass.

Either way, it’s now ever and I can plan things like electives. Oh, and I can work non-stop apparently. Rejoice.

So my exams are over, by a full week (very up-to-date…not), and I’m now enjoying a well forgotten freedom.

The results are due out on Monday so I should probably be preparing either a pass or fail post. Based on how I felt they went I’d say it should be a pass - without being too confident - but I may just be a bit too hopeful. We were told quite firmly that nothing specific from 1st year that we hadn’t covered again this year would come up in the papers.

Oh how they lied!

There was a good many marks that came from purely 1st year material. Thankfully only 1 question really stumped me and I still managed to put something down for it.

The OSCEs were pretty good, hopefully haven’t failed them. I did have to do an exam on my girlfriend which was possibly the most nervous station out of them all. She says I passed though, guess that could just be to comfort me (although I doubt it!). The introductions of the spot stations was a bugger, two came from one cell biology lab right at the start of the year and pretty much everyone was pissed off by them. According to the guy who’s marking them however they haven’t changed results too much. I hope that means 250 passes.

Following the end of exams on the Friday (and an interesting weekend) I started work on the Monday morning. By noon on the Monday I had taken blood for the first time. It was quite a nervous attempt - on our trainer no less - but I got there in the end. The mornings for the rest of the week involved us taking it from patients for real on the wards. I struggled in a number of cases but on the whole I don’t feel I did to badly. I even had the delightful pleasure of taking blood from someone’s foot!

The last day of the week involved working in a clinic. My second patient to bleed was particularly interesting. Not only could I not manage it, neither could my trainer and indeed the consultant was struggling. He finally managed though and gave us a nice chat about it and his book (Medical Biochemistry, for those interested) afterwards.

I’ve also found out that this 2 week training is followed by 4 weeks of mentoring on-site. Considering I’m contracted to do 8 hour weekends this is a bit of a bugger for me. I can’t work a full day since the service only works in the morning. I can’t go home and work because I need to be there for a month. That said, I don’t want to be working for a couple of weekends following training anyway - T in the Park!. I’m not sure what the outcome of this will be. My mum’s amazed that anyone can make you work weekdays for 6 weeks so you can eventually do the weekends, which is what the contract is for. To be honest, I see her point. Although I have no actual contact…yet.

On the off-chance anyone reading this has any use for a PHP dev/tech support/general layabout in the UK, feel free to get in touch. I’d prefer to be paid but if you’ve got something remotely interesting then I might be tempted to get involved regardless.

Next post will like to be result related. Eek!

Yes, it finially is tomorrow and am I ready? No idea. I think and certainly hope so but I can never really be sure. I could probably not have done much more in the way of working for it, although I did retreat home today for a BBQ. That might not have been the smartest move and I’m sure if I do fail some of the blame will go there but I honestly needed to relax and forget about medicine.

I’ve planned to head to the swimming pool (or certainly the sauna) straight after before heading into the SL to revise for the one on Tuesday. This will hopefully calm me down from what I expect won’t be my most enjoyable 2.5hrs.

Whilst I’m trying to work out what is coming up in my exam, the rest of the world’s geek community seems to be trying to work out what’s coming up in the new iPhone, suggested to be revealed in Steve Jobs’ keynote at the Moscone Center tomorrow. So far I’ve heard rumours that it’ll be faster (3G, almost certainly), thinner, cheaper (interesting one for me!) and colourful. I may end up buying a iPod Touch over the summer but if any and ideally all these rumours are true I may just head for the iPhone. The fact my current phone is less than a year old makes me realise just how much of a geek I really would be.

Still though….the iPhone….

With 4 and a bit days to go till my exams start today I finished my final PBL scenario of the year (alcoholic liver disease). Personally I considered it a horrid final scenario but wonder if the idea was to put us off drinking too much following the exam. Good luck.

Whilst finishing the questions I came across a sentence about liver function tests that I felt just had to be explained like so:

if ($g_gt > G_GT_NORM) AND ($alk_phos == ALK_P_NORM)
{
$patient = “boozer”;
}
else
{
$patient = “complicated”;
}
die($patient);

I felt like I needed to come on here and reflect upon the sadness (and difficulties, I made many mistakes!) of writing code in my notes. In conclusion I’ve decided the stress has finally got to me.
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I seem to have failed already to try and keep this a little more updated. Oh well, lets see what I can remember.

I got back to Uni with my rather shiny bike in tow. It’s not quite as shiny any longer but still pretty useful. Every time I use it and go up an even moderately steep hill I realise just how unfit I am. I’ve also not been running yet this year, which I’m sure can be classed as a failure. The weather’s been pretty terribly, if I can use that as an excuse.

The actual course itself is coming along nicely. Not too fond of my new PBL group - it’s by far the quietest one I’ve ever had. It contains a couple resitting and another with many years of higher education behind them. The plus side is that it’s quite a focused group (when we speak) and we get the PBL done to the letter with time to spare. Another plus side is that I’m only with them for 5 weeks, which since I’ve taken so long to post this gives me another 3.

So in no time at all I’ll be doing my first SSM. This is possibly the most exciting thing on the course this year and I’m really looking forward to it. I have two opposing views of what it might consist of. The negative one being a lot of science and limited, strict clinical sessions once or twice. The positive would be a few science based days with an unlimited number of supervised, educational but not too strict clinical sessions. Chances are it’ll fit somewhere in between, not quite sure where though.

I was sorely tempted by Queen’s Belfast’s Emergency Medicine Conference, which features:

• talks on acute medicine, trauma and major incident management
• workshops on data and imaging interpretation
• undergraduate research & poster presentations,
• the opportunity to gain valuable hands-on experience through the use of simulators for clinical procedures and acute medical emergency scenarios!

Sadly, it’s timetable at the end of the last week of the SSM (I think) which will probably consist of essay writing and presentation. The other downside is the lack of guaranteed accommodation and I’d have to sort out travel myself too. I’m hoping that next year I’ll be able to go though - whether it’ll be worth it then or not I don’t know.

The strangest thing happened recently - I found one of my best friends from primary school (Edinburgh, before I moved) on facebook. It gets even stranger when I found out he met someone from my school in South America! It gets just plain freaky when he replies and asks if I know one of my ex’s. (Oh dear!). We’re hopefully going to meet up in the next week or so. I don’t really know how to start filling in 10 years of non-contact. Guess we’ll just see what happens.

I’ve also found a pretty decent blog - Blog St John - which is an excellent insight into the background of St John’s Ambulance. Whilst St Andrew’s is quite different (it’s a lot smaller for a start), we seem to share common problems. I wish I could find one on the British Red Cross too, it would be nice to see which society really is falling to bits the most.

Maybe I’m being short sighted. I’ve not been in for long and I’m still getting used to how things work. Either way though, it’s not exactly a model organisation. I was tempted to start a similar blog, fully anonymous, so I could write similar stuff about St Andrews. The truth is though, I wouldn’t keep it up. Instead I’ll just have to post here my rants (one is coming soon, I’m sure) and hope that noone takes offence.

This is reasonably anonymous, but not very much so. I don’t imagine anyone who wanted to find out who was behind this blog would struggle much. I also don’t really see the need. This is perhaps best in a post of its own but very few bloggers have stuck to their pseudonym and I’m quite happy to qualify my postings if need be. Perhaps those who are intent on covering their identity consider themselves in a position where there background would cause problems of various kinds. Either way, I have very little to hide.