Not dead!

Wow, has it really been a month since I wrote that last post? That means that I have been working for a month as well. I guess that I underestimated just how busy I would be and this blog has been pushed to the background. I would promise to update more frequently from now on but it would be naive of me. The thing is, I just don't have the free time that I was accustomed to as a student, and when I am free, normally sleep is the thing that comes to mind, not blogging. Make no mistake, I'm going to keep this blog going, it's good to know that it's there when I have the time. Just don't expect daily posts, that's all. I'm going to aim for a "quality, not quantity" approach I think. Whether I succed or not, I shall let you, the reader, be the judge...

So what's been going on? Well, like I said, I've now been working for over a month as an FY1 doctor in O&G and it's been quite an experience. There have been highs (being successful at every cannula over a week) and lows (missing three cannulas in a morning, bringing my successful run to a quite catastrophic halt). The best thing I've done so far is assisting on a caesarean section on my first morning, and being the person to push a baby out of its mother's abdomen, then cutting the cord. All in all, a very surreal experience and I felt very privileged to be able to participate in this. The worst moments are the inevitable moments of self-doubt - the "am I really good enough to do this?" moments that I'm sure are normal to all newly-qualified doctors. Pharmacy have saved my skin on one occasion (I love the hospital pharmacists - every last one of them!) , and although I was merely prescibing what I had been told to, it's my name on the prescription and therefore my responsibility to check that what I write is correct. I certainly learnt from that experience and will make sure that I'm more careful in future. Also, an angry patient and her relative tried to make me the focus of a complaint when I had done nothing wrong. This was dealt with fantastically by the senior ward staff but it's still confidence-damaging.

My first bleep - that was a special moment of course. I was sitting at a computer in the library going through the mountain of junk emails that the hospital trust sends me every day when it happened. I calmly walked over to the phone outside the library (pulse racing of course - I've never felt more like a "real" doctor) and rang the extension....only to find that it was the ward sister asking me to rewrite some paperwork because it had been done incorrectly. A bit of an anticlimax in the end.

I haven't yet had to do any on-calls. This is because my job in O&G is supernumary (i.e. no one would notice/care if I didn't turn up for work one day) and so I'm not included on the on-call rota. I feel that this is a mixed blessing. When I see my colleagues being bleeped senseless, running about stressed muttering about "post-takes" and the like, I feel a bit left out - a bit "doctor-lite" if you know what I mean. I've put my name on the list of surgical locum F1s and so I hope that I will get to do some on-call if the general surgery rota is ever a bit short and I'm available. There are a handful of us supernumary F1s in the hospital and it seems ridiculous to me. There are unfilled general medicine/surgery F1 spots on the rota and here I am, doing a specialty that I don't particularly like and where I'm not particularly useful. Yet the trust will pay twice my salary to locums to cover the shifts that I would be more than happy to do. And we wonder where NHS funding can be saved...Anyway my next placement is respiratory, widely recognised as hell on earth when it comes to F1 jobs so I shall more than make up for my lack of work at the moment.

That last paragraph makes it sound like I'm sitting around in the mess all day drinking tea and playing snooker. This isn't quite the case. Just because I'm not needed doesn't mean that there isn't work for me to do, particularly on gynaecology where I'm often working 10+ hour days. I don't mind this too much - it's good to be busy and the more time I spend working, the more I learn. So yes, I am working hard, just maybe not quite as hard as the poor souls who are on-call for medicine/surgery.

This has become an epic-length post so I think I'll leave it there. Hopefully I shall update you all again in the not too distant future.

Simon

And so it begins

Sorry that I haven't written the second part of my post on medical school, I have been extremely busy these last few weeks. The second part will be written, I promise. I just need to wait until everything has calmed down a bit first so I can concentrate.

Tomorrow morning I will be the FY1 doctor for obstetrics and gynaecology at this hospital. The shadowing period over, I am going to be flying solo tomorrow for the very first time. Obviously I will be supported by my senior colleagues but I will no longer have someone looking over my shoulder every second of the day. What's even scarier is that I am expected to know stuff! O&G has never been my strongest subject and I really hope that my ignorance isn't exposed too much.

Anyway, I'll leave it there. Wish me luck tomorrow and hopefully next time I write, the body count will still be at zero!

Simon

Thoughts on leaving medical school, part 1

Now I have graduated I thought it would be a good time to look back over my time as a medical student and share some of my thoughts and experiences with you all. I'm going to focus on my time at Manchester rather than spend too much time talking about my St Andrews days, since I think that it is the last three years that have given me the most to think about and reflect upon.

I will make no secret of the fact that I am not a fan of Manchester medical school and I shall attempt to explain why in the following paragraphs. However I don't want this to become a rant, and for this reason I have found it a hard post to write (this is my third attempt at doing so). So I would like to start by acknowledging how lucky I am to have received a medical school education and I realise that there are thousands out there who would give almost anything to do the course that I have just completed. I also accept that there were some things that were great about Manchester. For example, I loved the fact that we were given 10 weeks to produce a piece of clinical research at the end of year 4. I learnt a lot about myself and my future career from this. Also, the online course management system at Manchester (MedLea) is actually pretty good. The techs love to fiddle with it all the time but it works well and provides a great infrastructure around which the course is based. There are other aspects of the Manchester course that I could praise as well, including some fantastic members of staff. I do appreciate my time here, and I'm grateful for the opportunities that I have been afforded.

Right, now I'm going to talk about what I see to be some of the less good aspects of the course. Let's start with a fact. The medical school here is BIG. There are about 450 students in my year and this, in my opinion, is too many. We are split over four teaching hospitals. Three of these hospitals are in Manchester and one is in Preston (about 40 miles away). So we have four groups of students all being taught independently, however they are all under the banner of University of Manchester. It doesn't take a genius to see that there are going to be problems setting equal standards across the board in these cases. Each base hospital approaches things in a slightly different way and therefore there is considerable variation in what each batch of students are taught. Before writing this, I spent some time looking at exam results in each of the sectors and it didn't surprise me to see that the number of students failing the January exempting exam (final exam) was by no means evenly distributed across the four hospital sectors. From this it seems apparent that some students are receiving better teaching/advice than others and that doesn't seem fair to me, especially as all the students applied to the same university.

Another disadvantage of the university being so big is that it seems very impersonal. In St Andrews the staff knew each student by name and genuinely wanted to help us achieve our goals. In Manchester each student is seen merely as a number, another punter passing along the medical school production line. This has a huge impact on student satisfaction. According to last year's National Student Survey, Manchester is the lowest scoring medical school in the country for student satisfaction (61%, the next lowest is 67%). Medical students are like puppies, we like to feel loved, and at Manchester we are just one of the masses. The feeling that you get is one of "so what if you fail, there are plenty more where you came from". I feel that the best way that this problem can be solved is by cutting back on the number of students admitted, and making the medical school more small and personal. Perhaps the Preston students could break away from Manchester and form their own medical school? There is a decent university in Preston and I'm sure they wouldn't say no to a medical course in their prospectus.

This post is already reaching epic proportions so I am going to leave it there for now. I do have more to say though. In part 2 I will write about the teaching and organisation of the course here in Manchester. This will hopefully be up in a few days so check back soon.

Graduation

So there we have it, it's official. I am a doctor. Wednesday was graduation day and the piece of paper that I received means that I am now Dr Simon MBChB BSc (Hons).

Almost as importantly to me, graduation also signified that I am no longer a student. More specifically I am no longer a student of the University of Manchester. I'm halfway through writing an epic length post about my experiences of medical school but let's just say for now that, in my humble opinion, the course at Manchester leaves a LOT to be desired. I shan't be sad to say goodbye to this university at all.

When I graduated from St Andrews three years ago, only my mum and sister were able to attend. This time my dad managed to get the time off work so that he could come along as well, and it was nice to have both parents there. The day started with a trip to the "robing room" to collect my gown and hat before heading to a marquee for the medicine garden party. This was an excellent opportunity for photographs with friends and family and it was nice to catch up with some people who I hadn't seen since I went on elective back in March, as well as to meet my friends' families. My little sister (15) took advantage of the unattended alcohol and helped herself to the complimentary champagne. I've never been more proud of her, she's obviously preparing herself for student life early!

After the garden party, the first half of the year went to their ceremony whilst those of us with surnames in the second half of the alphabet had time for lunch. I also spent well over an hour queuing for my "official" photograph, which will soon be hanging somewhere in the hallway of my parents' house I'm sure.

The ceremony itself was rather underwhelming to be honest. I loved the pomp and ceremony of the St Andrews graduation ceremony. This was much more business-like in comparison. There was no singing of the "gaudeamus", and everything was in English rather than Latin. I was particulary disappointed with the graduation address, given by a high-up in the university. It served as no more than an advert for the university. The essential message was "well done, remember how great we are for giving you this degree, please give us donations in return". The address at the earlier ceremony was apparently even worse. The poor students were given a telling off, and lectured about all the people round the world who would never have the opportunity to study for a degree. I'm sorry but a graduation address is supposed to be the time to celebrate achievement, and these two speeches definitely dampened the mood a bit.

I managed to walk up the steps, shake hands with the presiding officer, and back down the stairs again without tripping up and very quickly it was all over. After taking an oath (a modern version of the Hippocratic oath), it was time to put our hats on and join the academic procession. It was really nice to see some of our old lecturers from St Andrews that had come down to see us graduate. They looked so proud when one of their ex-students stepped onto the stage. Another great idea was that the university broadcasted the ceremonies live on their website. This meant that my auntie in Australia was able to watch from her bedroom (it was 2am over there) and see me graduate.

On the whole I enjoyed my day and I will give credit to the university for doing a great job of organising it all. Whilst the ceremony wasn't to my liking, I guess that St Andrews was exceptional and that Manchester was the norm, and so I can't criticise really. I now have one more week of holiday before I start my shadowing on the 27th July. I am excited and terrified in equal measure!

A busy few weeks

Hi all, I am still here. I am not going to be one of the many who write one blog post and immediately get bored. However I have been incredibly busy these last couple of weeks and so blogging has had to take a back seat.

So what have I been up to? Firstly I spent a few days visiting the girlfriend (FutureHEMSDoc) before jetting off to Germany for a week's holiday. After getting back, I had barely 24 hours to tidy my flat and pack up all my stuff before handing over the keys. I am now living with my parents again which is a lot cheaper for me although I couldn't do it for too long (I walked in on my dad having a bath the other day - apparently locking the bathroom door isn't important to him).

In other news, I have been getting lots of exciting paperwork, the highlight of which has to be my letter from the GMC confirming that I now have provisional registration. It seems weird that some of these letters are addressed to Dr rather than Mr and it still makes me somewhat uneasy. It's not true anyway as I won't be a doctor until I graduate next Wednesday. But even then, I think it will take some getting used to before I accept that as my new title. I've seen some medical students who referred to themselves as doctors after passing finals in January and personally I don't like that at all. Similarly, one of the consultants I worked with in Australia tried to get me to introduce myself to patients as Dr, which I refused to do. Not only is it misleading to patients, it also comes across as being very arrogant.

Anyway, I now have a few days to myself before I start preparing for graduation and my move down south. Today has been a tidying day and I am taking great joy in emptying old drawers and cupboards and seeing what nostalgia I can find from days gone by. I will try to write a couple more posts this week. I have two in mind, one which is going to take some planning and will be rather long. I may make a start this evening assuming I don't get a better offer of something to do, so keep your eyes peeled and hopefully it should be out soon.

Simon

Welcome

Hello and welcome to my new blog.

My name is Simon and I am soon to be a newly-qualified doctor, having just completed medical school at Manchester, UK. This blog will be a place for me to record my thoughts as I take on what will be one of the biggest challenges of my life - starting work as a junior doctor.

I hope you enjoy reading my posts - comments are always welcome. For now the blog will be open to all, although I may change to invite only in a few weeks.

It goes without saying of course that I won't be writing about individual patients. Work-related posts will concern my thoughts about incidents that have happened rather than the actual incidents themselves. I will also write about my non-work topics. This will be a blog about me first and foremost and so whilst medicine features high on my agenda, there may be occasions when I feel like writing a post on something completely different.

I think I will leave it there for now. If you want to contact me, you can find my email address on the side of the blog or alternatively leave a comment on a post, I read all of them.

Simon