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David Wright 07773 797 253

Tidying up

Ah..... after 25 weeks of Uni, and various busy weekends, I am left with a very large pile of stuff to file away... all sitting in neat piles... or at least they were neat piles when I laid them out.

Anyway today is the perfect chance to do them, as after a week when I have hardly been home, today is the annual Orange Order parades through the centre of Glasgow. This morning there was a heavy Police presence, include Butcher Bo, and a large crowd of Orange order fans and protesters. This evening there seem to bbe large crowds of drunk protesters and supporters going round town shouting at each other, traffic, and the world in general.

What we need is a very heavy rainstorm to send everyone home!

First Day off

So today was my first proper day off of the summer. And I haven't done much/anything of use.

As in real;ly, I woke up 18 hours ago, and i canl;t account for much of the intervening period. I slept a bit in the sun, cat like.

Bang!

I was sitting here about 20 minutes ago just on MSN and doing some emailling, when I head a bang. I got up and looked outside.A van has crased into the side of a taxi at teh traffic lights outside my flat. The van has kinda stopped dead, and the taxi has been shunted ovver into some roadworks - outside the building opposite.

It all went very quiet for five ninuites. I could see the van driver was on the phone, so didn;t feel any need to call the emergency services. Sure enough, within 10 minutes there was an ambulance rapid response car followed by a normal ambulance on the scene, anoither 5 minutes and the fire brigade arrived, and still no sign of the Police.

Meanwhile the 3 roads which empty into this junction are starting to back up and traffic is having to do U turns oin one way streets to get away - sounds like a recipe for disaster the way some people drive round Glasgow at night.

H O L I D A Y

I have booked my summer holiday.

First week in August, to London for 6 nights staying in a (hopefully nice - well it looks ok on trip advisor) hotel in Kensington.

Plan to see some school friends who live down there and also be very touristy - Science Museum, Kew Gardens, some shopping maybe, John Soanes house, Wellcome Collection etc.

Then I have the third week in August working at the fringe, and seeing a few shows as well, so that gives me two weeks in August to relax, see family and such like.

Boiler saga

Well, 5 visits, several hours of workman trime, 4 weeks and a few hundred pounds later, my boiler has a new pump,m new valves, a new PCB, and will soon have new temperature sensors. Hopefully it will then work properly.

Currently I obtain hot water by opening the front of the boiler and wiggling one of the temperature sensor wires, which then causes the circuit board to realise that the water in the 'out' pipe is cool and thus starts heating teh water. This works for a variable period of 2 days to 20 minutes. Thankfully when not working correectly, the LED flkashes constantly, so it is fairly easy to tell.After 10 plumber call outs in 5 years, my admiration for the boiler manufactuirers is immense. I habve no idea what the pourchase cost was, but I feel I have paid them at least the same value in out of warranty parts, thus maintaining their income!

If only there was mains Gas into the building.

Score!

Well that is term officially over. 25 weeks, or 175 days or....well you get the idea. 5 blocks, from ICU to psychiatry via Obs/Gyn and Medicine. It;s been a long term with lots of good bits,, and some boredom.

I managed to get to the end of term by getting a score of 2 for every module this year. With some complex maths which gives every piece of assessment from years 1-4 a score, I now know that I have achieved a score of 38 out of 70; the main reason for the low score being exam resits in years 2 and 3. So now faculty will rank the whole year group by these scores; and sort us into quartiles. The 4 quartiles then get a score of 34,36,38 or 40 points which counts towards the MTAS ranking. So for all mys core is not that great, it only penalises my a maximum of 6 MTAS points.

The MTAS score however will give me 5 points for having a BSc First Class; and I can get 1 point for a presentation at a National level, and 1 for a publication. Sadly I fear that my SSC Audit may not be written up and submitted in time. However I do have a paper from my BSc Hoinour project, so I can win back 6 or maybe 7 points there.

The rest of the Foundation Programme MTAS form is so awful and boring I am goiing to forget about it over the summer.

Choices, choices

Today I was thru in Edinburgh and once I had finished my ususal stuff, and been to an 18th Birthday lunch BBQ, I went to see a friend from my BSc days. She was a genetics geek and then went on to do a PhD and is working as a post doc researcher in cancer-y genetics in Edinburgh. She gets to go to all sorts of exciting confeerences in Prague, and Crieff......

It was very interesting to compare stories as to what could have happened if instead of choosing Medicine in 2004, I had chosen to do a PhD and go into biomedical research.

I had applied for medicine and a PhD and got back acceptances for both on the same day, thus meaning I had 24hrs before I had to reply about the PhD offer. Except by the time I got the email it was midnight and I had until 5pm to reply. I also had a really busy day and ended up only snatching moments to think about it, and came to the decision "You can do a PhD as part of research as a medic, but you may not get another chance to study medicine". Wheher accurate or not, that is how I made the decision!

The boiler saga episode 2, part 2

Now that the boiler engineer has been, I am left with the knowledge that a valve has leaked, dripping water into the pump, which is shorting. He has dried the pump, but even so, it seems I need a new pump and new valves. Even then there could be microprocessor problems, though apparently these are unlikely.

Either way the parts will arrive Friday so it will be Monday before they can come and fit them, which means another half day off placement. Monday teaching is officially at 1.30, so I would hope to make it in for that.

Now just deciding whether to go in this afternoon and find my FY1, or whether to stay home and finish off my case write up, boil water for a shave and shower and just head in for 9 tomorrow morning.

Head says the latter, heart just doesn't know.

Welcome back to my crazy life

The first part of this post has come back to haunt me.

The boiler died again last Thursday with a strange burning smell.... So I phoned the company, who said they would find out whether they could still obtain spare parts since it seems that Pulsacoil may have gone bust / reformed / stopped making the boilers. It turns out they wrote the phone number down wrongly. So they didn;t call me back, so then I called them yesterday and was told they did have the parts available, and there would be an engineer available this week. I requested that they come out. I am sure they said that they would come today........

But after a no show until 4pm, I phoned them and apparently they are sure it is for tomorrow....morning at 9.30. Which coulkd be interesting since I have hospital teaching at 11am, a 50min drive away! I am hoping they can fix it the first time, as a second visit will mean missing more of this placement and also I wnt a warm shower!

• I also have a broken dishwasher, but cannot book their engiuneers only a day in advance, and also they can only commit to a day not a time, so i may have to survuive without that until end of term in July.
• I need a dentist appouintment, so might try to ring one of them as I have cracked a filling....
• I need to arrange an MOT for the car before the 17th.
• The wooden fascia of the dishwasher needs refitting to the dishwwahser unit

Sometime I think I need a PA!!!!!

Sorry!

With many apologies for my absence. I should learn in future to remember my passwords and not let my PC remember them... cos when I change my PC user area then I lose my passwords...

So anyway life has been fun and busy and I shall recap these areas soon, probably the M onday holiday on.....Monday..

Technicalities of life

Having got my car back, and then been away to see Mum & Dad last weekend, I spent the past week gradually coming to terms with life and several busy evenings, including uni, comedy, friends visiting, winning a music pub quiz (as part of a team obviously). I also found time to get a new phone as the old one died. I was also out for inner tonight, which was especially nice.

I am thus now part of the iPhone 3G group... first impressions are very good but it did require iTunes, which for some reason my laptop wouldn't install due to a 'corrupted user area. Thus I backed up all my stuff and created anew user area on the laptop, only taking about 5hours. I also tidied my contcat lists, and sorted out my files on the PC whilst all this was happening, so it wasn't wasted.

Having found out how to copy my mail settings across, I can now sync my diary on the pc with the one on my phone...which is kinda cool. I still need to work out how to use teh full functionality of the iPod part of the phone, but that requires an understanding of iTunes.which may have to wait for another day.

This week looks to be another one with several late finishes, with an 'academic meeting. tomorrow, the music quiz on wednesday, an ICU night out on Thursday and then an invitation to Cheesy Pop on Friday night. The quiz doesn't start til about 9, so is a useful post uni, midweek chance to catch up with friends, and demonstrate our lack of knowledge, and eat/drink our winnings from last week.

Happiness and regrets

Well today my 04 intake got their exam results, and everyone I have heard from passed. If I had passed 3rd year the first time around I'd be with them, and looking forward to becoming a Doctor in August, a career, money, success and a long summer holiday. So I;m really pleased for all them, twinged with a slight regret that I won;t be with them, and that I have another 12 months work and graft until (hopefully) I can also add MBChB after my name.

I hope they are nice next year when we students are on their wards.

Graduating a year early?

You might think that of all the people to keep track of what year of a Uni course a student is in, that the University registry might be pretty clued up.

And yet, myself and other students who have either missed a year, repeated a year or taken time out due to illness, and thus despite an 04 (or 03) matric number, will be graduating in 2010 not 2009, all received the following this week.
As yet they have not responded to my email. I wonder if i can graduate this year and thus avoid having to sit exams in 2010. Thought not.

Housekeeping or the house and uni

Well in this weekend between blocks, I tried to be productive... after taking the car to the garage early on Saturday (such a short night) I decided to start cleaning the kitchen, including scrubbing the hob, scrubbing, hoovering and mopping the laminate floor throughout the living area, cleaning my desk, scrubbing the bathroom, and then hoovering the bedroom and tidying everything away from the bedroom surfaces I felt that things were going better, so on Sunday I printed all the Uni notes I did not recollect printing and found the matching lecture notes from this year and started filing them. Despite lectures only once every 5 weeks, the pile already almost fills a ring binder.

The notes on clinical skills are less organised because due to the nature of this year, they become more integrated into normal notes... I need to work out how to formalise and organise the notes from placements as well into a form from which I can revise when the time comes.

SSm starts tomorrow

In a follow up to this, tomorrow I start my SSM at DepCat hospital in ICU.

It is an audit, and now I have a title, a topic, and a pile of reading at tall as a house! I also have a questionnaire I composed to gather the data and now need to design a spreadsheet to put it all into. In some ways a database might be more useful, but I;m not sure how to extract data from that and this needs to be more about the data than the process. It is essentially a 'paper' audit with no actual changes to practice in the unit until we reach some conclusions, but could involve going back through 720 patient records (or 300 patient notes) hopefully though this might be nice and easy and come in a spreadsheet itself from the labs.

Although I did my ssm in ICU before christmas, thatw a s abig city ICU with tertiary centres, and high level professorial input. This next one is a much smaller unit, with more paper based recrds, so it may be something of a change. For a start not all the staff wear scrubs....and I might not get to either.

The exodus continues

well in the past 2 years, since I left my lace of work the first time, the rats have been leaving the sinking..... sorry other colleagues have been leaving. First Stefan, then Gstar, Chris, Sarah, and now Butcher Boy. This leaves the tattooed drinker and little Miss P holding the fort, although they have now been joined by some new people...

So Friday night became Butcher Boy's second leaving night...he is maintaining a watching brief by getting his flatmate to work there though.

Time to recharge the batteries

My car is ill.... on Friday a red light came on indicating that I had ignition problems... I managed to keep it going until Saturday morning, as the lights got dimmer and dimmer, and then managed to coast it to the local Ford dealer on Saturday who said they would look at it and get back to me, but most likely the link from alternator to engine had gone - apparently this is common in Ka's. However the Ka has also done almost 12000 miles since I got it in August (see here) and needs a serrvice.. so this little episode may not be cheap........

Ethics in psychiatry

Wow well Psych turned out to get a bit busier towards the end than I had anticipated. I ended up completing all 4 case sin the final week, and had to adapt one of them to fit the demands of the Uni ethics case.

However, like many others I worry that I have done the ethics case wrong. The guidance notes seemed to refer to patient safety stuff and us seeing staff doing things wrong and how this could affect the patients prognosis and outcome.

Mine focuses more on the issues to do with a 17yr old with prodromal posychoses and self-harm but who contninues to abuse large quantities of illicit drugs, and for whom pharmacotherpay is bcoming elss effective as he takes more drugs to achieve the high he wanted.

I linked this to teh situation of heart disease, and the fact that medics and GPS continue to give statins and anti-hypertensives een though people continue to eat badly, exercise poorly, and drink and smoke mroe. Thus I reasoned the illicit drugs were only different ebcause they were illegal, but that such isuses shuould not affect patient care.

However from the otehr side, if the pharmaco-therapy is meaning that the patient is taking more illicit drugs (with no quality control sapling etc) then it puts him at greater risk of adverse side effects and making his psychiatric condition worse, so maybe in the interest of non-malifience we should cut back his treatment.

In the end I came to no clear view........but in my experience psychiatry was all about discussing the options and not coming to a decision......

Sorry for being away

Where did February go?

Mostly in a haze of youth group stuff, psychiatry at Uni - of which more later and sleeping - for some reason I am absolutely shattered this block!