Wednesday 22 September 2010

Starting Year 2 - Cardiorespiratory

Finally i'm back, and safe to say i made it through 1st year, and am currently already a week into year 2!

Couldn't have asked for more this summer, had an absolutely amazing summer holiday - went to see so many different places, got some part time work done, and managed to do things i would have never had the chance to do if i hadn't come to Barts and made the friends i've made here, i LOVE BARTS!

.......and now onto CARDIORESPIRATORY, a big dose of it; in fact its a chunky 6 weeks worth of it! Not exactly how i wanted to start the year, but hey.. i'm glad it's not B&B!

So far the lectures have been "okay" bordering on the lines of "dull", it's all been a big chunk of anatomy revision with a few new diseases chucked in... *Fingers crossed for more interesting lectures soon, before i actually fall asleep in a lecture (again)* Ok, perhaps i'm being unfair, we did have one interesting lecture moment on ECG interpretation this week; however the intersting part came from our lecturer's slip up, answering a student's question about AF along the lines of - "atrial fibrillations don't exist" ... ¬.¬ (They are amongst the most common arrythmias - we even had a 2 hour pbl session discussing it!)

Hmmm ok, i guess i did enjoy the ecg practical this week - finally made sense of Einthoven's triangle, and i know this sounds so so silly, but i now know what they mean by a 12 lead ecg! A bit embaressing, but throughout the entirety of first year, i thought it meant literally 12 leads/electrodes attaching to the chest to acquire 12 seperate readings, when leads actually refers to the readings, and only 9 electrodes are required.... i always wondered where the other 3 missing leads attached!

And finally a bit of an annoying revelation and not so CR related, is that according to the welcome lecture we had at the start of the week, it is required to be in the top decile to get a distinction, whilst all along i was under the impression we just had to obtain a merit in 2 consecutive years... grrr i knew it was too good to be true!!