work placements

hey guys,

though late, happy christmas! i just got back from a week in cancun, mexico - the temp was 30+ degrees all the time and i had an amazing time!! guess that's one of the good things about the really long hols!

this is just a quick post during the hols just to answer a common question that cropped up during medlink. i don't know of any of you reading this would have seen me - i worked on the cam stand at the exhibition, chatting to a few of you about your questions regarding cam, and then also did the oxbridge student forums bit...

anyway, a lot of you asked me at the time what sort of work experience you need to do in order to get into cam. the simple answer to that question is to do as much as you can (with limits obviously), but try to make it as varied as possible. it's good if you have an primary care experience (i.e. GP) and a secondary care one (mainly hospitals). you perhaps also do some tertiary care / speciality clinics e.g. for specific conditions like cerebral palsy, for example.

i did:
- one week shadowing a consultant paediatrician in a clinic for children with special needs (cerebral palsy, etc)
- one week in anaesthetics in my local hospital (which is a good dept to shadow, as they are involved in lots of things, from intensive care to operations - i was allowed into theatre to observe caesarians and prostate ops!!)
- volunteering at a local charity shop on and off for about a year - this was for my d of e awards

that's all i did - as you can see, the actual amount i did wasn't huge, but i did learn a lot from what i saw/did, and was able to talk about it in reasonable detail at interviews, which is all that really matters! the take-home point is to therefore try and take as much out of your placements as possible, as the length of time you do it for is pretty irrelevant (unless it's like 5 mins)!!


that's all for the time being, i'll keep posting any more questions that crop up.

kirthi :)

end of term - woo!

despite the fact that i have no less than 6 (yes, 6) supervisions this week, it's all good cos 2day is pretty much my last day of timetabled work - got a neuro lecture in half an hour followed by the usual 2 hour wed morning pathology practical. at the moment we're doing parasitology in path, which is pretty interesting, if not a little bit gruesome! the more you learn about how different diseases manifest, the more paranoid you get about going on holiday to the tropics!!

however the term's not quite over for me... i've got my preparing for patients course (in the 2nd year we have to interview patients in hospitals, about their expectations of healthcare), which is pretty much the main clinical contact you get at cambridge. note how we do actually have patient contact (and the subjects we do e.g. anatomy, etc are all clinically orientated), but it's because cambridge traditionally never did this that it's been labelled as having no clinical contact in the undergrad course! pfp is pretty much coursework - spend 4 days or so doing interviews / preparatory sessions, and then have 5 weeks to write up the coursework.

this week has been pretty busy so far, hence the delay in writing this blog. pretty much going out every night (!) with all sorts of christmas dinners and stuff popping up. we've got christmas formal hall on friday - tickets for christmas halls are notorious for being sold ridiculously quickly. we had 2 queue up at 7 in the morning for an hour just to make sure we got our places booked! plus it's like £9.40 (which is a more than standard hall, and not particularly gr8 value for money if ur a tee-totalling veggie like me!)...

amongst the medics in my year (only 8 of us), we're also doing a secret santa... the thing is, everyone pretty much knows everyone else's secret santa and what they're getting them, so it's not really that secret! plus some of the things we're getting people are completely outrageous, so best not b mentioned on here... it's gonna b fun watching people open them though!!

this'll prob b the last blog i make for a while - over christmas i've got a fair amount of stuff to do. going to mexico for a week (oh yea!) but then have mock exams when i come back (oh no!) so will have to do a fair amount of revision. despite having ridiculously short terms, the thing you find at cam is that you do have to put a fair amount of work in during the hols - it's not like school where you can afford to laze around for 4 weeks doing nothing!!

anyway i'm going to get late for my lecture - will hopefully b blogging away soon next term! merry christmas and a happy new year 2 u all!

kirthi :)