Random recent pictures

Does this count towards the 5 a day?

The almost finished conversion of the old GPO in George Square.

Again, ground-breaking science being published. This is real science, this is what people need to know - in a bottling will a full or empty beer bottle break easiest?

Chaos

This block has started strangely. There are a 2 cohorts doing Paeds at the same time. This translates as 45 of us in one hospital (of 12 wards) and thus cases are under extreme pressure at the moment, with about 5 med students on each ward looking for suitable cases. Hopefully this will calm down over the next few days else it will be near impossible. The teaching programme however seems more robust and has a fair ammount of tutorials, teaching ssessions and clinics, as well as soem free time. This makes it much ncier than most hospitals.

Recycling, it just goes round and round

I noticed as we got home yesterday lots of people had brown wheelie bins out, so when playing the car shuffle this morning so Mum & Dad could go out, I pointed to Mum that theirs wasn't out. Mum said it was the Garden Rubbish for recycling. It seems the council collect people's garden rubbish and convert it into compost for the council to use on flower beds and parks etc.

One of the houses with such a bin had a car outside out of which people were unloading compost from B&Q.

The irony and additional cost of this struck me - if people had their own compost heap, then they would save money, the council would save money, and they would be taking a pro-active approach to recycling...this may not work in flats etc, but in deepest suburbia with decent sized gardens then it should be obligated!

End of block

Another block over, 9 down, 3 to go, revision now cranks up another gear, hence I am sat in my old room at Mum & dad's writing revision cards about dementia at 9.20am on a Saturday, and wondering why I don't remember some of this stuff from the actually teaching blocks.

Today's revision topics are all psych related which fits well with some of the GP stuff I saw - depression, distress, anxiety, psychosis, dementia and addictions. In fact that probably made up about 1/3 of consultations, especially anxiety disorders.

It is strange being back in my old room - It hasn't been painted since I was last here for any length of time, in 2004, and thus looks pretty much the same, including my high school desk, but the bed has been changed - sister getting married required a double bed in the guest room - and the bookcase us now covered in Mum & Dad's books not mine. On the other hand, being at the coast means it is much much windier than Glasgow ever is - mind that could be an east coast thing, as Edinburgh was always very windy........ Either way, it is now very windy today and rain is crashing off the windows - and 2 couples I know are getting married near here today - hope it dies down a bit.

On the way down last night, it was raining rather heavily - after Mum house sitting all week to wait for the dishwasher people - see another post for more info on that - Mum and I met Dad at Longtown for a meal in a rather surprisingly nice cafe/restaurant then drove back along ' the military road' from Greenhead to heddon - the road is as the name suggests right next to hadrian's Wall, and follows the roman route on the south of the wall for most of the way. It is pretty straight and thus quite hilly, which adds to the fun of driving a small Ka with 3 adults and luggage on board.

Island life

My time on the island at Gp is finished and I am back to stable internet connections, and coffee shops! the island community was relatively small, so blogging was always going to be tricky as by their nature some thinsg i saw would be very identifiable, and recent media coverage has been banging home the message about confidentiality and anonymity for patiients in blog / facebook etc posts.

The intersting things included:

• surgical emphysema and pneumothorax in someone who fell at night
• managing to palpate a breast lump
• student led surgeries
• phlebotomy
• friday night in A&E
• the various skills fo the GPs - extracurricular
• the ward rounds and community hospital next door
  
• childhood injections

The next block is child health, and is the start of a run of 3 blocks back here in the city. This is very strange as I had 1 block in the city in the whole of 4th year. Without a 30 minute commute, how does one prepare for the day?

New year, new ways to avoid revision

Well it is here, 8 days into final year at Med school, only 150 something to finals. One Five Oh...................as in 5 months.............as in argh!

Anyway Block 9, at least I think it is 9, or maybe Year 5 block 1 - yes that is easier, is GP. GP blocks have a reputation for being very boring, very quiet and drinking lots fo tea, much like Psych but with less depressed people. My block is turning out to be anything but...I am on an island for starters, which means no ferries after about 7pm until 7am. This means no ambulances to big A&E and city hospitals. Thus the helicopter (more later)!

This also means that there is no GEMS/Deputising service for Out Of Hours - so the duty GP covers GP emergency, A&E, Minor Surgery, OOH cover and Maternity, as well as Police Surgeon duties. All these have my phone number so I am wondering how many 1am phone calls there will be......

The practice is the only one on the island and covers about 7000 people, 25% are elderly, 14% are kids, and almost 50% appear to have a long term chronic disease of one type or another. So all in all life is not exactly super-quiet here, except after work..... the rush hour is very proportional and seems to focus around ferry arrival and school start / finish times. After about 7pm, the town gets very quiet and up where I am staying, I can hear cars passing on the road about 100 yards away. I can even hear the cows in the adjacent field, though I have not yet noticed the deer which apparently roam the field behind my accommodation.

The practice staff are all friendly, the nurses and receptionists slightly more so than some of the medical staff, who due to their work patterns haven't really seen me much - the on call person ahs the enxt day off, so I only saw my supervisor one day last week - hoping to catch up with her tomorrow to arrange some Phleb sessions with the reception staff on 'study' mornings or where my timetabled stuff doesnt start until 10 or 11.

Considering staying over here for part of a weekend to see how busy A&E is. But looking at diary, doctor on duty rota etc, the only possibilities seem to be staying this Friday night, or coming back on Sunday afternoon this week.

Anyway this week is a right mess. I am back at Depcat hospital to present my SSM research stuff on Wednesday so I need to (gale force winds permitting) head back to the city tomorrow, then meet registrar (who has moved to anotehr hospital) on Wednesday morning, then onto depcat to present the findings, meet Mum and Dad for a carvery meal, then back to the Island on Thursday (5.45am start) til Friday night or Saturday morning.

Shouting Lager, Lager, Lager, Lager, Lager, Lager

Tennent's accounts for 55% of lager sold to Scottish pubs and clubs and around 30% sold to off-licences and supermarkets.

Source

This made me wonder.... is price what drives drinking habits. Are half of the people drinking Tennent's in pubs just doing so because it is cheap, and spending 'more' for higher quality lager's to drink at home?

Holiday pics.

It's a long while since I last travelled first class. And this time I
am doing it for less than the cost if a normal ticket. Twenty minutes
into the journey and I havd coffee juice and a croissant and a man is
collecting the breakfast orders! I know it is all very boringly
normal if you travel first class and stay kn nice hotels all the time
but fir me as a holiday it's a nice change from nescafe on a ward round

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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!!!!!