{"id":715,"date":"2015-11-30T19:57:10","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T19:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/mala13\/?p=373"},"modified":"2015-11-30T19:57:10","modified_gmt":"2015-11-30T19:57:10","slug":"one-3rd-of-the-way-through-3rd-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/2015\/11\/30\/one-3rd-of-the-way-through-3rd-year\/","title":{"rendered":"One 3rd of the way through 3rd year!"},"content":{"rendered":"

These last 10 weeks have been amazing.<\/p>\n

In Year 3 you spend 3 x 10 week attachments at hospitals. I was at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital the last 10 weeks and I had such a fantastic time. I learnt a lot but also overcame a lot of anxiety!<\/p>\n

Starting clinical placements was really tricky for me. I thought as a talkative happy person I would really enjoy being on the wards for the first proper time as a medical student. However, my first day was a disaster. I had my stethoscope round my neck and my medical student badge on, and I walked confidently up to my ward. It was ward round in the morning, the room was really warm. Really warm. A mixture of nerves, excitement and seeing a lot of blood made me get really faint. Yeah\u202610 minutes into my first day in the hospital and I was already on the floor. My consultant assured me that it happens to everyone\u2026does it?!?!?!?! I didn\u2019t see anyone else on the floor!!!!<\/p>\n

Anyway, things picked up and I really enjoyed talking to patients\u2026but then we had to examine them. Oh my gosh, it is so much harder than I imagined to feel comfortable to examine patients. I have been taught my whole life not to touch boys- at all. And then suddenly you are dumped into a situation when it\u2019s absolutely fine to touch everyone, in fact people expect you to!!! Such a weird experience!!! Hospitals must be the only place in the world (apart from spas!) that this is normal.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I got over this pretty quickly and started fully examining patients. By week 3 I was strutting around the wards loving life. But then, the consultants wanted to know what I had seen on examination. ARE YOU KIDDING!?!?! I had absolutely no clue. I just knew I was putting a stethoscope on a chest but I couldn\u2019t really hear much it was all a muffle really. Oooh the learning curve was steep.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I learnt. I started picking up a lot about what the diseases were, the treatments, the drugs and of course learning how to remember a patient\u2019s name and not forget it a minute after asking.<\/p>\n

I spent my last 2 days on Intensive Care Unit. It was intense. Just when I thought I was really confident after my first 10 weeks I came into a shocker of a situation when I had to deal with the really emotional side of working in healthcare. Patients were reaching their end of life and I was just a student. I couldn\u2019t help anyone, in fact I am pretty sure I was just being a nuisance being there. But, I learnt a lot. The team work that went into the treatment in the Intensive Care Unit was immense to watch. In a fast paced environment the patient flow was fast too- patients were coming in and out of intensive care but I was just standing there on the side trying not to get in anyones way. Being a medical student has its fun perks, but also has its moments that you remember forever, and the first conversation about \u201cturning off the machine\u201d is one that I will never forget.<\/p>\n

I am really looking forward to my next 10 week attachment and glad that we have a bit of a break in between to reflect and relax. I hope that the next 10 weeks are interesting, but not too interesting that I faint again with all that excitement.<\/p>\n

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How many times did I embarrass myself in the hospital?!?! Too many…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1037,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97118,1,98094],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-icsm-2","category-uncategorized","category-year-3"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1037"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}