Final post - Dr Tofu MBBS BSc (Hons)

Hello!

It was back in 2007 when deciding I would re-apply to medical school having missed my grades a few years back at A-level which started this all off. Now 8 years on, I have finally finished moaning my way through being a medical student wannabe, to medical student, and finally the soon to be FY1 Junior doctor. 

Sorry it's been a bit of a late update. As soon as exams were done, I was packing for my electives, and well, it's all been a bit of a blur! 

On results day I remember going into the library having chickened out of opening my results in front of everyone from a brown envelope. I sat there in front of the computer constantly pressing the refresh button and waiting for the results to appear magically at 2pm. 

I pressed refresh and one set of results came out, it was the written paper, 63%, provisional mark:  pass ... okay that's not too bad, could have been worse..... i kept bashing refresh... OSCEs, 75%,  number of OSCE stations failed ... 1 ....

My heart stopped for a moment, fail? really? what?! ...... i was a little shocked.... before then realising I was allowed to fail up to 7 (i think), and there it was, one more refresh, and OSCEs provisonal mark: pass.

That was it, I PASSED! (i couldn't believe it, and had to press refresh a few times, hoping they hadn't made a mistake!!!)! With the results already known... i then went to join the rest of my friends all celebrating outside the medical school building, and queued up to collect my little brown envelope with my results within it.

Many free glasses of alcohol and a few more at the pub later, I had the best sleep in weeks and woke up the following morning still not believing that it has finally happened. 

Few days after results I went on my electives, and what stands between now and starting work on "black wednesday" (6th August 2014) is graduation and an awful amount of forms to fill in (i received my first piece of "Dr Tofu" mail the other day and it's all starting to feel pretty real right now.

I think this might just be my last post. I have loved every minute of medical school, and wish I could have written more of it down.

Thanks for reading... and here's me signing out,

Dr Tofu MBBS BSc (Hons)

Finals (almost there!)

After 5 years at medical school... finals are finally here. Wish me luck! Finals exam in 23 hours...! time for some finals cram...

Anaesthetics placement

ITU REG: Tofu, what's the difference between A&E and ITU?

TOFU: Well, it's a lot calmer in ITU, i mean, a lot of the patients are intubated and asleep...

ITU REG: Quite right! The difference between A&E and ITU, is that in A&E they do very non specialist things in a busy environment, and in ITU we do highly specialised things in a controlled environment

Whilst I find it a bit cringe worthy when someone in one speciality makes a comment about another, but I suppose he has a point about the environment. 

My 3 weeks in Anaesthetics went by quicker than I imagined, and I was surprised by how enjoyable it was! Probably a tad unfair, but I didn't expect much from my anaesthetics placement, and did expect it to be pretty sleep inducing ..ha!

The placement itself was probably the most well organised placement i've had to date, with a week tagging along to anything I want in the realm of anaesthetics (on call, O&G, pain clinics etc), a week of surgery (i went to a different one every day), and a week jumping between HDU & ITU.

I know this really shouldn't be a bonus point... but this placement got a lot of the bane of my life logbook ticked off too, so that has to count as a bonus! 

Oh, and that time i asked if i could do a chin lift, and the anaesthetist casually passes me the LMA mask and asks me to insert it into the patient whilst i'm there by the head was pretty decent too. I was pretty worried at first, seeing that i've never done it on a person before, but in his words "just shove it in, don't worry". 

So that was anaesthetics... it's 3 weeks of Vascular surgery when I'm back after the new year... !

The worst thing about having a part time job as a tutor...

... is having to revise GCSE Physics on a Saturday morning!

EURGH!!!

I'm not sure what's worse... revising physics so i can teach it later this afternoon; or spending another hour or two doing SJT practice questions.

6 days till SJT exam.. can't wait to have it out the way! I'm so fed up of doing questions and ranting about the stupid explanations given which seem to contradict every other question justification before it.

Getting busy

Final year is starting to really pick up, and I don't feel anywhere near ready yet... !

There's many a time this academic year to date, where i've actually felt completely stomped. You know where you feel like you should know the answer, but the words escape your mind... well yeah, that's happening a LOT at the moment!! 

It's good I realise how little of general medicine I remember, as "THE FEAR" is growing and that helps kick me into study mode...

Finals are in approximately 4 Months time!

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So since my last post, I've been busy with my SSC in ophthalmology, followed by 3 weeks picking up skills on how to be a FY1 on the respiratory ward (part of my general medicine firm), and now i'm approaching the last week of my emergency medicine placement. 

Going to keep this short.. so in summary/highlights:

SSC:

Brilliant placement! I don't really want to say i know exactly what I want to do in the future just yet, but this is high on the list. Electives in ophthalmology? - definitely!

General medicine:  

I realised i don't know enough (!!), but on the plus side - I've done a lot of practical things, and i'm definitely growing more confident with doing ABGs, cannulas and bloods now. 

Got to know the nurses really well, and I had a few goes at setting up IV drugs, and giving nebulisers to patients (it sounds more complicated than it does, you just twist it open and pour it into the compartment in the mask, wack on the air, and hey presto!)

Emergency medicine: 

Got to put my first dislocated shoulder back in place! 

Reg: Tofu, have you ever done this before?

Me: no..  but I don't mind helping you out

Reg: Okay, in which case, Tofu you're going to do it

Me: erm... okay!

-- he gave me a quick tutorial outside the patient's cubicle, and we went in together and did it. I was surprised with how much strength i had to pull the arm with.. and how quickly it went back in place. 

Oh... and I managed to dodge the spit of a confused (or she really didn't like me) 80+ year old lady with a UTI in the emergency department. I was trying to do a CNS examination on her, and for a moment she held onto my hand. I thought this was simply her wanting my attention, but before i knew it, her lips formed together and they parted with spit coming in my direction. This sounds odd, but thankfully her mouth was rather dry and it didn't have much acceleration... I managed to wiggle my hand out from hers and escape before her 4th attempt at spitting at me. 

Trauma calls = be the scribe = i don't know where i'm meant to be filling in the information!

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AFP interview in 11 days time! I stupidly left it late to select my interview date, and all the later dates have already been filled, so i'm going to have to prepare as much as i can in the short time i have! 

First Week of Final Year

That's 1 week done, and 43 more to go!

I didn't feel ready to walk into the Perrin lecture theatre on Monday. It's both quite scary, and exciting knowing that it's hopefully my last ever "first day back" to uni of my medical school life.

I woke up early (with the help of 3 alarm clocks - this doesn't seem to change), wasted time with my morning routine, and got myself to uni. Signed in, collected a huge pack of forms and a surprisingly small log book, and sat myself down for what was to be the typical boring week of introduction lectures.

I don't really have much to talk about, other than feeling pretty happy with all the "freebies" i managed to collect during the week (can't go wrong with a few pens, highlighters and books!).

Random fun of the week would probably be the "Class of 2014" photo - with the bleachers erected on Tuesday, (with no effort made by myself) we had the class photo taken, and ready to be collected for if when we get through the year.

Not exactly a negative, as i suppose it's pretty good that our medical school is preparing us for the national prescribing exam, but an exam at the end of the first week back?! Arghhhhhhh!

.............and that's it! Final year is finally up and running!

Just before i start final year...

So last September, at the very start of 4th year, i decided to have a guess at which modules I would enjoy and which I would probably hate.

This is how it looked...

Obstetrics and Gynaecology - Like (Really tiring, but a lot of fun!)

Paediatrics - Like (correct...ish)

Neurology - Like (wrong! I thought i would enjoy this..but.. nope!)

Psychiatry - Like (THIS WAS NOT FOR ME)

Opthalmology - Dislike (Loved it!)
Orthopaedics - Dislike (it was okay)

Rheumatology - Dislike (again, really enjoyed it!)

Care of the Elderly - Like (it was okay..) 

Dermatology - Dislike (this was actually quite interesting, but i wouldn't want anymore of it)

GP - Dislike (it was.. okay)

So i was pretty off with my guesses !!

First day of final year tomorrow... let's hope i fall asleep quickly!