After my SSM at DEPCAT hospital (see here) I wrote up the results of my project, and we submitted it to a scientific meeting. Due to my SSM being in Intensive Care stuff, this means that most of the other posters were written by senior registrars, researchers and consultants.
I was thus quite lucky to be one of the 50 chosen to be assessed in the poster competition at a conference in St Andrews yesterday. This did necessitate an early start, but was a really interesting day with some very interesting lectures on H1N1 and the medical responses to it, and then some research presentations from across Scotland - it was also a chance to catch up with staff I had met on SSM and elective over the past 2 years. This networking surely can't be a bad thing when I get to ST applications in 2012!
However back to earth with a bump, and sat revising in the (boiling hot) library of one of the hospitals, and wondering whether my tiredness despite 7 hours sleep is in anyway related to lack of vegetables and fruit in my diet at the moment.
Being in SL in the evening doing past papers and revision does tend to make you a snack food addict - subway, greggs, ready meals, coffee, tea, irn bru, crisps, chocolate ....and hospital food is not much better - the average sandwich contains a bit of lettuce!
Showing posts with label depcat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label depcat. Show all posts
Friday, January 22, 2010
Monday, September 7, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, March 16, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
SSM(C) 2
I have another SSM / SSC coming up in March-April. After the fun of my last one at big city hospital in November, I am hoping to do the next one out at DepCat hospital. This one is looking to be an ICU Audit of some sort, and there will be two students doing it. The ICU there is much smaller so hopefully elss records to rake through!
Anyway the two of us students met last night, over coffee to plan our moves from here and brainstorm some ideas on what we could audit - any sugegstions? We have to meet the Consultant, plan the audit, sort out the practicalities, submit it to faculty, get a response to faculty from the consultant and have faculty approve it. All by next Friday.
Anyway the two of us students met last night, over coffee to plan our moves from here and brainstorm some ideas on what we could audit - any sugegstions? We have to meet the Consultant, plan the audit, sort out the practicalities, submit it to faculty, get a response to faculty from the consultant and have faculty approve it. All by next Friday.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Should we get annoyed?
a.k.a. Why do good things happen to bad people.
Over the past few weeks, a common pattern seems to be emerging - often young, previously healthy patients with wives/husbands, young families, and who are working and contributing to society* are getting very sick, and or dying, whilst chronic alcoholic, IVDU's end up recovering from their alcoholic encephalopathy, seizures, and coronary events*.
*the above are composites of different patients.
It seems unfair that people who were doing good, and are only a little older than myself are dying, despoite all the treatment we can offer, and yet people who are on their second or third ICU visit are recovering, but not reforming and going back out to continue their downward spiral.
I am not suggesting that some lives are more important than others, but there does seem a fundermental unfairness about the fact that those who contribute to society are the ones to die, and those who sponge/take from socety are the ones who survive.
As one doctor put it today "those with a rough paper-round have just become so tough that it takes more than a bit of alcohol and an MI to kill them".
Over the past few weeks, a common pattern seems to be emerging - often young, previously healthy patients with wives/husbands, young families, and who are working and contributing to society* are getting very sick, and or dying, whilst chronic alcoholic, IVDU's end up recovering from their alcoholic encephalopathy, seizures, and coronary events*.
*the above are composites of different patients.
It seems unfair that people who were doing good, and are only a little older than myself are dying, despoite all the treatment we can offer, and yet people who are on their second or third ICU visit are recovering, but not reforming and going back out to continue their downward spiral.
I am not suggesting that some lives are more important than others, but there does seem a fundermental unfairness about the fact that those who contribute to society are the ones to die, and those who sponge/take from socety are the ones who survive.
As one doctor put it today "those with a rough paper-round have just become so tough that it takes more than a bit of alcohol and an MI to kill them".
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
How long have I got?
Leaving aside any politics or debates about the pro's and con's of our welfare state, and pension system (which in fact predates the welfare state - the random facts you get from watching BBC4 documentaries, or was it QI?) , this makes interesting reading. If we lay all the economics and social policy stuff about pension pot, and actuarial scales...something I don't even profess to comprehend let alone understand, one table hit me:
Copy and paste directly from BBC Website on 30th September 2008
Note how the bottom 5 are all in the area covered by my beloved Medical school. One factor that those of you not familiar with the West of Scotland can be seen in this map
Sitting squarely between Glasgow City and North Lanarkshire, and adjoining West Dumbartonshire is East Dumbartonshire, and area which one might except to have a similarly poor life expectancy for its 65 year old residents. Except that it does not. If we look at other statistics in teh full report (here) we see that East Ayrshire adnd Clackmannanshire also have poor life expectancy figures. And yet, East Renfrewshire does not.
There seems to hjave been some nice games played when the old Strathclyde region was divvied up in the 1990's, to create the unitary authorities you see on the map above. The two areas I identified, East Dumbartonshire and East Renfrewshire also have very high (for West of Scotland):
The local health profiles designed by the ISD of NHS Scotland are interesting reading (unless you are a Glasgow First Year Medical Student doing Block3/4 Community Diagnosis coursework, or year 2 Family Project coursework). Similar are available in England. They also offer tobacco atlases! I can't stand doing statistics but I like graphs and maps... Maybe epidemiology is worth understand after all, but I still don't think I could deal with a career in public health.
| Lowest Life expectancy at age 65 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 432 | Glasgow City | Scotland | 13.8 |
| 431 | Inverclyde | Scotland | 14.9 |
| 430 | North Lanarkshire | Scotland | 14.9 |
| 429 | West Dunbartonshire | Scotland | 14.9 |
| 428 | Renfrewshire | Scotland | 15.0 |
| 427 | Knowsley | North West | 15.3 |
| 426 | Manchester | North West | 15.3 |
| 425 | Liverpool | North West | 15.3 |
| 424 | Hartlepool | North East | 15.4 |
| 423 | Cannock Chase | West Midlands | 15.4 |
Note how the bottom 5 are all in the area covered by my beloved Medical school. One factor that those of you not familiar with the West of Scotland can be seen in this map
Sitting squarely between Glasgow City and North Lanarkshire, and adjoining West Dumbartonshire is East Dumbartonshire, and area which one might except to have a similarly poor life expectancy for its 65 year old residents. Except that it does not. If we look at other statistics in teh full report (here) we see that East Ayrshire adnd Clackmannanshire also have poor life expectancy figures. And yet, East Renfrewshire does not.
There seems to hjave been some nice games played when the old Strathclyde region was divvied up in the 1990's, to create the unitary authorities you see on the map above. The two areas I identified, East Dumbartonshire and East Renfrewshire also have very high (for West of Scotland):
- school exam results,
- owner occupier,
- car ownership,
- house prices,
- health indicators
- incomes.
The local health profiles designed by the ISD of NHS Scotland are interesting reading (unless you are a Glasgow First Year Medical Student doing Block3/4 Community Diagnosis coursework, or year 2 Family Project coursework). Similar are available in England. They also offer tobacco atlases! I can't stand doing statistics but I like graphs and maps... Maybe epidemiology is worth understand after all, but I still don't think I could deal with a career in public health.
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