Life on the wards...

It's the new year, and a new start for the Oxford 4th years... having finished our Pathology course, we now move on to a series of rotations, including 6 weeks medicine, 6 weeks surgery, 4 weeks of special study modules (SSMs) and 6 weeks of medicine/surgery in a district general hospital (DGH). Although I'm doing my rotations in that order, others are doing it in different orders, so unlike the pathology course we're all now split up and doing different things (which in a way isn't quite as much fun)...

So medicine. What's it like?... Having spent the better part of a week doing it, I guess I can point out the immediates pluses and minuses of being on the wards. In the hospital, doctors are assigned into 'firms', which each firm typically consisting of a consultant in charge, a registrar, an senior house officer (F2) and generally 1 or 2 junior house officers (F1s).

In medicine these firms rotate and take it in turns to be 'on take' i.e. in charge of admitting new patients. Being on take is the best time for us medical students as we're given the chance to 'clerk' patients first-hand i.e. take a full history, do any relevant examinations, and then present what we find to a senior doctor. It's really interesting and varied simply because you don't know who's going to be referred and what's wrong with them - there's a pretty wide range in the type of patients you can see on a typical medical take.

After 'take' comes the post-take ward round, where the entire firm will go through each patient one-by-one, lead by the consultant. The doctor/med student who clerked the patient will then present the patient's case, and the consultant will then authorise the management plan to be carried out. It's quite interesting from the student's point-of-view, especially as we're treated as part of the team and given the opportunity to present what we found out.

When you're not 'on take', there are still things you can do, like taking blood, putting in catheters, etc etc, but one thing you'll hear every med student complaining about is that there's a lot of standing around going on, and for every hour of actual history-taking or teaching you get, there's probably 5 hours of standing around you need to do before you get there!! It's something I think you get used to with time... unlike preclinicals, you really have to be proactive on the wards, and make best use of your time there, and it's down to you to decide when to leave and go and do something else (in my case go for a coffee break!) and when to stick around in case something happens!

Since it's only been a week on the wards (after 3 years of medical school!) I haven't got much else to talk about, but will definitely keep you guys up to date with what's going down in the Radcliffe as my attachment unfolds ;)

Kief