Friday 6 July 2012

Health promotion


Okay, okay, I'll admit it, my fitness level dropped considerably during GEM year 1.  The sedentary lifestyle of sitting on my arse studying constantly has finally taken its toll on me.

Now that I have a ‘summer’ (if by summer, you mean torrential rain), I now have the time to get healthy and fit again (like I was prior to GEM 1) before year 3 starts.  My plan is to get back into weight training again as well as cardio exercise, to both tone up and lose weight.  I have a treadmill in my bedroom and find it an easy was to burn some calories when the weather is terrible outside.  However, the problem that I have always had with treadmills is that they are boring beyond belief, I can't help but feel like a hamster running on a wheel.  I always struggle to stay motivated and can barely last for 10 minutes running on a conveyor belt before I end up thinking, ‘screw this for a laugh’.

However, the other day I stumbled across an excellent little page on the NHS Choices website called:
‘Couch to 5k’, and what a cracking little idea it is.

Couch to 5k is an audio running plan that is aimed at helping anyone (at whatever fitness level) to eventually run for 30 minutes over a period of 9 weeks. 
Nothing that novel really, but why do I think it’s a great idea?  Well, I think it’s a cool idea because the website contains weekly podcasts that can be downloaded.  
The podcasts are brilliant because they act as your own personal trainer, telling you when to start running, when to slow down and when to pick up the pace a bit.   
The plan sets you 3 runs to do per week and after each week you download the next podcast that gives you a running plan that is a little bit more demanding.
It’s a rewarding little programme because you can feel yourself getting fitter as the weeks go on.  Plus it is a great way of keeping motivated if you are running on your own and you never really get the chance to get bored of it because every week you move on to a new podcast.

So there we go, thought I’d put that out there and jump on the health promotion band wagon. 
If you want to get fit and are struggling with the motivation then download the podcasts; check it out guys.  Let me know how you get on if you decide to go for it:

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/c25k/Pages/get-running-with-couch-to-5k.aspx  

- 'Helping medical students keep fit since 2012'

A week in the life...


Since I have survived the first year of graduate entry medicine I thought it would be appropriate to give prospective GEM/GEC (graduate entry medicine/course) students an idea of what an average week is like.
The first thing to mention is that different medical schools all have a slightly different structure to their graduate entry courses so this might not fully apply to some prospective GEM students, however I am sure that some aspects will overlap.

The GEM1 course that I was on was very PBL (problem based learning) orientated, not all GEC/GEM courses are like this and some universities prefer graduate students to primarily attend lectures rather than undertake group based work. 

It is important to emphasise that the PBL structure of my course only applies to the first year of GEM because years 3-5 are the clinical years that are primarily based in hospital.
This is in contrast to the standard 5-year undergraduate course at my medical school, which is very lecture based.  We never really got to meet the undergrad 1st and 2nd years, because they attend lectures as the main bulk of their pre-clinical years, therefore GEC/GEM students often get to know each other very well and form a tight knit group.

PBL revolves around being put into groups of around 8-10; and every week as a group you work on a problem based study with a tutor overseeing discussions. 
The problem based studies often incorporate key topics involved in the biological sciences for a certain module as well as incorporating the relevant anatomy, ethics and medical sociology for that week.  Each member of the group covers all aspects of the case studies and the problems are grouped into 4 week themed blocks.  This will cover the basic science, anatomy, ethics and sociology; with all of these topics being integrated into the problem based scenarios.
For example, in the 4-week neurology block one weekly scenario might talk about a patient who has a movement disorder, who is on certain drugs and who might also have other issues going on in his/her life.   As a group it is then discussed what key topics need to be covered from the scenario e.g. how movement is normally initiated in a person and then what can go wrong to produce disease, what are the drugs that the patient is taking and how do they work, what ethical problems crop up in the scenario etc.
Therefore, each PBL problem has many different aspects and learning triggers to it and therefore each week involves having to cover a great number of topics and learning outcomes.  After the PBL group discussion has finished, each member of the group then goes away and studies and makes notes on the discussed learning points/outcomes.

However, PBL does not encompass the whole of the GEM course, far from it, there are also weekly anatomy lectures and group based anatomy teaching with demonstrators.  Every week there is anatomy reading that has to be done in order for students to get the most out of the group based teaching.  Other lectures are also dotted about every week and these might be lectures in ethics, statistics, sociology as well as the key scientific principles that underpin the weekly PBL scenarios.

Every month or so there are also anatomy prosection sessions in the medical school prosectorium.  Prosection is a pre-prepared dissection of a cadaver (the dead body of a person) by professional anatomists; this enables the medical students to observe carefully dissected human bodies that are extremely well preserved (i.e. so you can see all the relevant structures).  This is in contrast to dissection whereby students learn by physically making incisions into the cadaver.  As a general rule, some medical schools prefer prosection and others prefer dissection.  All cadavers are individuals who have voluntarily donated their bodies for medical school teaching and therefore it is a session that is treated with great respect and most students feel very privileged to have such a learning opportunity.

Weekly GP visits were often the highlight of the week and every student is registered with a GP practice that they attend weekly, often in small groups of 4-6 and are run by GP tutors.  These GP sessions often involve sitting in on GP consultations, conducting patient interviews and medical histories as well as practicing clinical skills.  Clinical skills are great fun and really provide an insight into what life will be like as a clinical medical student and as a doctor further down the line. 
For example, clinical skills covered will often involve learning how to take a patient’s blood pressure (the traditional way, using a stethoscope and mercury sphygmomanometer) to more physical clinical exams such as upper and lower limb examinations and neurological exams.  My GP group were lucky enough to practice venepuncture (IV access into a vein to gather a venous blood sample) on each other and other groups gave flu vaccinations to patients.  Other clinical skills might involve testing cranial nerves, testing patient reflexes (using a tendon hammer), MMSE (mini mental state exam) etc. 
Communication skills are also exciting but a real challenge, as certain points throughout the year the GP practice invites an ‘actor’ to act out a certain scenario that we as medical students might have to deal with in the future e.g. the angry patient, the upset patient, the difficult patient etc. 
Learning the clinical skills really well is a good skill to acquire early on in the course as it does prepare you well for the end of year OSCE, which can be quite nerve wracking. 
Every week a key theme in GP practice was to elicit a patient medical history through interviewing a patient individually; these patients often had medical conditions that related to the PBL scenarios of that week.  For example, when covering the 4 week cardiac and respiratory module I spoke to one patient who had COPD and another who had suffered from a heart attack.  This is useful as it means you can apply what you learn to real life situations and to see how such conditions affect a person directly.

In the first term of my course, 4 weekday evening medical school sessions (7-10pm) are dedicated to what is known as BLS (Basic Life Support).  Everyone has to train to provide BLS and it involves learning how to respond to certain emergency situations, for example, how to deal with a patient who has a burn, someone who is bleeding, choking or in shock etc.  Learning the recovery position and knowing how to correctly perform CPR (which is practiced on plastic dummies); learning about chest compressions, rescue breaths and how to use an AED (automated external defibrillator).  At the end of the 4 weeks BLS there is an exam that every student has to pass.

During the first year we also have a hospital induction day whereby we shadow on of the 5th year medical students, which gives a real taster of what is to come in year 3 (clinical years).

Overall, GEC/GEM1 is jam packed, non-stop year, but it’s very interesting and you learn so much.

Anyway, enough of the essay.  Any questions about GEM year 1?  Feel free to write a comment!

Thursday 28 June 2012

Results Day

Finally, a day to celebrate.  On Wednesday I got my exam results (27/6/12) for year 1 of graduate entry medicine and I can proudly say that I have passed and will now proceed into year 3 which is all very exciting and a massive relief.

I think that getting through the first year feels like such an achievement on a graduate entry course simply because of the nature of the structure of the course.  Graduate entry courses are a year shorter than normal 5 year undergrad medicine, however because it is a year shorter it unfortunately means that you have to do two years worth of preclinical work in the one year.  So you are having to cover the same amount of content that the 1st and 2nd year undergrads did in half the amount of time.

It therefore doesn't take a genius to understand that this first year has been very intense to say the least; doing two years worth of work in just the one year means that it has been by far the most demanding and tough academic year of my life. 

It does seem rather strange having only done one year of study to think that in August/September I will be a third year medical student.  However, saying that, I am really looking forward to getting out into hospital to get involved in taking patient histories, clinical examinations and hospital bedside teaching.  Finally I can start to look forward to the clinical years.

If I had to give any advice to people thinking of studying graduate entry medicine it would be this:

Wherever you end up going to study, the first year of a graduate course is going to be intense, relentless and hard work.  But trust me, from someone who has been there, just stick with it!  There will be times where you will genuinely feel that you can't do it and you will often doubt whether this is what you really want to do with your life.  That is natural and I know that many people in my year did feel that one at some time or another.  There is no magic secret to passing GEM/GEC 1 other than: 'don't give up and just stick with it!'.

First ever blog - background

So, here we go, my first ever blog.
Just a quick message to really reiterate what my profile message says; I hope this can become an online diary to share experiences that i've had as a medical student, what it is like and to also hopefully encourage others to share their experiences of being a medical student or the experiences of those applying to study medicine; whether that be the normal 5 year course of the graduate entry course.
I hope you enjoy my blogs; early days yet but please feel free to comment on anything posted.