Archive for August 2008
Medicine Summer School
Posted on August 28th, 2008 by Sarah
Hi!
I’m Sarah and I’m going to University this October.? Not to read Medicine, but to read Chemistry.??In the end, I felt that?Chemistry was more appropriate for the type of career path I wanted to follow.
This is?my first important point – only choose to apply for Medicine (or any course)?if you are 100% sure that the course is right for you.? Do not let anyone pressurise you into choosing a course that you have doubts about, as it is you who is going to be studying the subject for x amount of years – not anyone else.? You will have to?be?dedicated to?your chosen?subject, and?this will come across?when going through the?interview process.?? Universities will expect you to be passionate about what you want to study.
Last year I attended a Medicine summer school at Durham University.? There were approximately 30 of us on the Medicine course, and the first day began with an introduction to the department.? Immediately, an emphasis was put on commitment to a medical profession.? A level grades were also highlighted.? We were told that Universities asked for 3 A’s for the Medicine course just because the course was so competitive.? This will be the main problem if you apply for Medicine.? Although in the newpapers there are frequent reports of a shortage of doctors in Britain, there aren’t enough places on the Medicine courses to accommodate the?number of applicants.? You will need top grades to have a chance of getting on the course.
On this summer school, we were told what Universities looked for in a personal statement specifically for Medicine applicants.? As well as having the required A level grades and a good UKCAT score, some evidence of work experience was crucial.? Anywhere where you are working with people and helping people on a daily basis.? Apply early to a number of different places to ensure you get some experience.? (A lot of people at the summer school had left it too late and were unable to find any placements at all). ?If you can’t get work experience in a hospital or at your doctors surgery, why not try a hospice or nursing home.? Remember, a lot of other people will be fighting for placements nearer the application time, so act quickly! Even if you don’t manage to get some work experience before you apply, if you have some?lined up for later in the year put this on your personal statement.? It will help!
Throughout the summer school we did classes which would have been typical on the Medicine course.? As well as some theory, there were circuit sessions where we had to do a different activity at each point.? The first ’station’ was first aid.? At this point we each had a dummy which was the supposed casualty?and we had to act out how we would help in the situation.? At the next point blood pressure was explained and we each took a turn taking each other’s blood pressure.? We also practised using stethoscopes and examined our knees and elbows!
The final station was anatomy.? Here we had to paint body parts on first year medical students.? This was fun, although there were several different colours of paints, and the lungs ended up being green – not really a good sign in a patient!? The first years told us about their anatomy classes in which they looked at organs which had been preserved in formaldehyde.? However, due to formaldehyde being an appetite stimulant they always had to go to McDonalds after anatomy class….
1 Comment »Obstetrics ward week
Posted on August 16th, 2008 by Rob
Being a doctor is tiring and I?m afraid to say a little less fun than expected. My bleep never stops. I start work at 8am every morning and my bleep usually goes off before I’ve taken my coat off, adjusted my tie, and had my morning wee. It then goes off every five – ten minutes until I leave at about 7pm. I should finish at 5pm but I just don’t get all my jobs done. I feel that this might be my own fault. I haven?t found a natural flow to things. I start a to-do list each day and cross jobs off when they?re done. As people see me they quickly add as many jobs to my list as they can (midwifes, patients, SHOs and registrars). I just get started on a job and then my bleep goes and I have to apologize to the patient, go and answer my bleep, add the job to the list and then back to the patient. This was very exciting for the first few days but now it?s getting boring. I have so many forms to fill in. I?m hardly using anything that I learnt in the last 6 years ? I?m just filling in blood forms, writing the same old things in the notes, filling in TTAs (to take away (prescription)), and taking blood/putting in venflons.
In the last week I?ve made maybe three medical decisions on my own ? 1 yes this lady is constipated and needs and enema. 2 ? Her haemoglobin is low so let?s give her iron tablets. 3 ? This woman could get sick so I?ll call the registrar (times 100). The reg is always in theatre so I have to go down to theatre, and explain what?s wrong with the woman. He then tells me what to do and I go and do it.
The most fun I had was with a woman who had a caesarean section for twins. 5 days post-op the midwife bleeped me and said ? ?I?m just not happy?. This is a common midwife complaint. So I went down and had a look and her wound was oozing green horrible stuff. So I bleeped the reg ? he was in theatre. I went down and told him (I?d already taken the initiative to start antibiotics ? very brave of a young doctor as starting new drugs in any pregnant or breast feeding woman is dangerous. Anyway the reg said ? you better remove the sutures and lay it open ? very exciting ? So I went upstairs and on the ward cut open the stitches that were holding this poor woman?s tummy together. It was very smelly. I didn?t vomit (but almost). She?ll have to spend extra time in hospital and heal by secondary intention (new growth ? as oppose to primary intention where the two sides of a wounds stick back together. You can?t suture an infected wound.
On Tuesday we met my favourite member of staff so far ? Father Rodney is the cheerful, up beat Chaplin. He single handily tries to keep the moral of everyone high. It was Thursday when I first called Father Rodney. A 21 year old woman went into labour at 24 weeks gestation. 24 weeks is on the borderline of viability. The baby is alive on NICU where it has a 95% chance of dying. The neonatal doctors beat me to the room and explained the bad news to the family. I was next in. I had to explain that I was an obstetric doctor and here to look after mum only ? I know nothing about the care of babies. The baby was in a bad way but mum was also in need to care as she had lost lots of blood. The reg was (you guessed it) in theatre. He promised that he would be up as soon as he could. I needed to get IV access and start fluids to replace the blood loss, take bloods to make sure that she didn?t need a transfusion and start a drip of syntocinon. This is a drug that makes the uterus contact. She had a bit of placenta left in the uterus and it was making her bleed heavily. If the synto didn?t do its job she may have to go to theatre and that could end up in a hysterectomy which would end her chances of future pregnancies. It was all too much for her, her husband and her parents. It took me 4 attempts to get a line in ? she needed lots of fluids plus the synto drip fast. That means a very big needle ? little needles restrict the rate at which you can transfuse. However, this woman?s veins were just too small for the venflon. My flipping bleep going off every 2 minutes now ? the same midwife bleeping me until I answer. At last I remember Father Rodney. I bleeped him (almost in tears myself). After I finished the medical stuff he took over, meaning that I could answer my bleep to the stupid midwife that *urgently* needed me to fill in a form.
This was my ?ward obstetrics week?. Next week is ?gynae week?. I?m told that ?gynae week? is the hardest.
2 Comments »UKCAT
Posted on August 13th, 2008 by Matt
I’ve just finished my UKCAT test, and found it both easier and harder than I expected. Unfortunately I can’t give too much away as the test is “UKCAT Confidential”, but I can give some good pointers and tips for you!
As most of you will be aware, UKCAT is made up of 5 sections. 4 of those go to your mark (which will be between 1200 and 3600) and the final section is used to find out about you as a person. The 4 marked sections are Verbal Reasoning, Quantative Reasoning, Abstract Reasoning, and Decision Analysis. Each is marked between 300 and 900.
My advice for the first part is to read the question, then the extract as it will save you time if you know what you’re looking for. The choose the correct statement. Repeat this process for every question in this section.
My advice for the second part is be quick, and use the calculator. I was a little shocked at how quickly the time passed over for this section, and I answered the last question at a complete guess with only 5 seconds to spare. The eraseable notepad comes in quite handy here, and can be useful when you need to analyse more than two things simultaneously. Don’t be surprised if you don’t get to check the review screen, it barely flashed up when I got the “end of section time” message.
The third section is mainly visual. Go with what your eyes tell you and try not to over analyse. I suspect that the section is not designed to have you trying to work out exactly which one it is, but at the same time, your eyes can deceive. It’s about striking a balance, and using the review button (after you’ve chosen A, B, or Neither).
The fourth section is what the eraseable notepad is really for. You are required to work out a message from a code, or to encode a message. My advice is use the practice tests, and get used to the coding… The other thing I did, which really helped me, was to write down the literal translation of every coded message, and work from there onwards. You have time to do this, and don’t forget to raise your hand and get another notepad if you need one.
Finally onto the fifth section, which aims to discover your non-cognitive abilities. In other words, it wants to know about your personality, and what you’re like as a person, how you interact with people, how you see the world, and so on. This section is all about honesty, as the questions are staged around three areas it wants to know about, and the questions are set in such a way that it can detect liars! The simplest advice here is answer quickly, and don’t look back. There’s not much to say about yourself if you have to think about the type of person that you are.
In general, the level of knowledge expected from you is that of a GCSE math and english student, it’s pitched around the C/D borderline level of those two exams in my opinion. So don’t stress on revising, and don’t pay anything for these so-called prepartation courses, because all the preparation you need can be freely downloaded…
Matt thinks he’s charming, but a little manipulative!
No Comments »Observation skills
Posted on August 9th, 2008 by Matt
Stop. Don’t move. Don’t even think. What colour is the front door of your house?
You know, the one you walk through every day. It’s the one you’ve got the key for. It’s quite big, you know, with a certain type of handle. Front of your house, you know which one I mean.
Now honestly, answer me this, could you answer this question correctly and honestly in less than 2 seconds? I couldn’t.
I’ve asked more than 40 people at my halls to correctly name the colour of the 3 front doors. They are Red, Green, and Blue (in that order). Most people guessed a colour other than those three, and nobody identified that they were each a different colour.
You’re reading this because you want to be a doctor. Before you start medical school, my advice to you would be: brush up on your observation skills. Suggestions include the doors in college, the name of your college cleaner, the name of the shopkeeper on the corner, the colour of the drivers uniform on the bus/train, the road name of the shortcut you use to get to town, the name of the all the bar staff in your local.
For your information, mine are glass/automatic, don’t know, don’t know, white shirt & navy trousers, St. Bede’s Terrace, and I don’t know. But guess what I’ll make it my business to find out. And one more thing, doctors need to be approachable – are you the kind of person to start spontaneously talking to the person sitting next to you on the bus? If not, get the confidence and try it – it can be quite fun!
Matt says: You’ll interact with all sorts of people as a medic. Get to know each one personally, and make time to say “Hello” to them.
No Comments »Controversial note
Posted on August 8th, 2008 by Matt
Many parents may well want to have a go at me for this! However, as an applicant myself I feel it is very important to say this: Students applying to do medicine should do so because they want to and not because of any other external factor…
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.?– Dr?Seuss.
Now another little anecdotal tale I have is from the University of Birmingham – the claim to have had a student that turned up for interview and said, “I don’t want to do medicine, but my Dad made me apply, please fail me, please!” Needless to say, she didn’t get in.
I understand that parents want the best for their children, and that they want them to do well, and have a good job, earn lots of money, and the rest (gee, aren’t ideal worlds nice these days?). That’s quite right. But remember that medicine is a very demanding career choice, and influnces the rest of your life in almost every way. The best support a parent can give any university applicant is to provide them with the information and the opportunities for every course and university that they would like to consider, and then support them in whatever choices they choose to make. End of!
Matt says: It’s all about mind over matter, really!
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