Consultant: "yep, i agree with everything she said"

Had that awesome feeling, when the consultant agrees with you!

Earlier this week, i attended an Asthma clinic, where i was instructed to clerk patients before the consultant got to see them, and then present the patients to him at the clinic.

The consultant took me to a spare consultation room, and gave me a patient at a time. I managed to clerk 3 patients that afternoon, with full abdomen, respiratory and cardiovascular examinations, and a rare chance to actually take their blood pressures manually (on the wards... i'm a tad lazy, and i just take it off their observation charts, but in the clinic they didn't even have the electrical one so it had to be manual..that and the consultant made it pretty clear he wanted me to take all the blood pressures manually) - this was really good practice!

I'm a bit insecure when it comes to clinical signs, i guess it comes down to not having very much experience and confidence. It sounds silly, but i can sound so confident when i present a patient, but secretly be so insecure and unsure of what i'm saying or doing.

".........Mrs X has bi-basel coarse end inspiratory crackles ...........everything else was unremarkable"

Consultant gives me a look of "oh really?" - "I better have a listen too", and gets the patient to sit up on the examination bed. After the consultant wizzes through the examinations (how do they do it so quickly?!) he take his stethoscope off, gestures towards me and says : "yep, i agree with everything she said"

i can't explain the feeling itself, but it's pretty awesome when you do a clinical examination and someone agrees with your findings!!

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WARNING: Moaning about resp. firm coming up
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Respiratory medicine has been pretty relaxed.

We don't have much teaching, there's 15 of us here (!!) and there's simply too many of us to have many group activities. I think it's called a MEGA firm, - that's what i've been told.. im not sure if that's an official name for such a big firm, or if it's what the students call it...but meh!

So respiratory is a crazy game of following the timetable, and you only get to experience everything once, i.e TB clinic once (mine got cancelled), CF clinic once (mine also got cancelled), and making sure you turn up to tutor teaching and X-ray teaching (yep both of mine also got cancelled).

Week one.. was pretty bad. I commuted to hospital, and my morning session was cancelled, stayed till 1.30pm, then find out my afternoon clinic was cancelled too. So i just clerked away on the wards and went to watch bronchoscopy... and that's sort of how i managed to get through week 1. Week 2 thankfully has been a bit better!

Bronchoscopy again today! (looking forward to it)

EDIT: DAMN it.... after posting this.. i went in to hospital... and lo and behold bronchoscopy was cancelled today! >.<