Student blogs

This week my ‘Challenge of the Week’ is slightly more light-hearted than previous, but just as important: Fitness.

If you’ve ever seen Charing Cross Hospital you will know that it’s a very tall building- 15 floors to be precise. If you’ve ever visited you will also know that the lifts are quite slow and busy. A typical journey involves waiting for 5 minutes to get into a lift, squishing in with patients, healthcare workers and various pieces of equipment/prams/wheelchairs. Then you stop at every floor- not just for people to get out, but to wave to all those people stuck on other floors who are also waiting for the lift (and keep pressing the button…).

Now, most of the time this is not a problem- I simply leave an extra 10 minutes to allow me to get to the floor I need looking calm and collected. However, sometimes I can be running late, which raises a difficult dilemma: to wait for the lift, or to run up the stairs?

Recently, with regret I picked the stairs, which is when I was challenged by my fitness.

The first few flights were okay, but after the 5th floor (there’s two flights of stairs per floor) it started to get a bit more challenging, especially as I was on a deadline to arrive for the ward round on time! A few minutes later I arrived, very red and sweaty, catching my breath on the 9th floor. Fortunately I had made it on time! Unfortunately I hadn’t appreciated that the ward round was about to turn into an exercise class!

Our patients were all on different wards, and for efficiency my team took the stairs. Unfortunately for me this meant running up and down all 15 storeys for the rest of the morning, with a very athletic team! It was hard work, so if you ever see me running up and down the stairs in my trainers, you know I’m in training for my next placement at Charing Cross!

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