Summary of Year 1

Let's do an overall summary of Year 1...

• I arrived at university and met my flatmates. I had to make all new friends from my course and my student accommodation, who thankfully remained by my side throughout the whole year!
• I did house viewings and decided on my accommodation flat for next year!
• I learnt soooo much! From anatomy, to law, to sociology, to ethics, to histology, to biomedicine to biochemistry! There has been so much content on each individual system in the body which you can't help but feel excited to turn up to lectures.
• I have handled a lot of cadaver specimens and have been exposed prematurely to death. I have also taken part in shadowing a pathologist during a post mortem.
• I have taken part in clinical shadowing at GPs, where I did some clinical skills and did individual home visits. Here, I learnt how important communication is when it comes to talking to patients.
• I have also shadowed doctors at Southmead Hospital and have been taught by both patients and the teaching fellows about body systems and some clinical skills - such as taking blood pressure, blood glucose levels, auscultation and palpation.
• I completed an essay project, as well as an art project. This is based on medicine being both a science and an art.
• I have worked as HCA as part of the course, where I worked four shifts of 7 hours and one 12 hour shift.
• I loved being a HCA so much, I then went on to apply for a job as a healthcare assistant in Bristol. I went for the interview and then received my job offer. I then attended the training and now awaiting some shifts to sign up to!
• I have completed my exams, January and Summer and passed to progress into Year 2!

I can't believe how much I feel I know ever since starting just less than a year ago!

Year 1 has been filled with some very exciting moments and I have enjoyed every second of university life. You are so independent and have so much fun which is incomparable to any other experience I have ever had! I would say I would love to do it again, but I'm really excited to go into Year 2!

I hope all of your exams go well and you receive the results you both want and deserve. Have a great summer, and I will speak to you in September if not before!

Term 2 Done, One to Go!

...and shot to that!

That's another term completed, with just one more to go! This year is going so fast, I thought the teachers in my sixth form were exaggerating when they said it'll go this quickly.

This term has been full of the more sciencey anatomy body stuff which has made it 10 times more interesting and gripping! The labs have got more interesting definitely with an extension on the histology content, looking at how the epithelium of the bladder allows it to expand and return to its original shape etc.

This is what the typical student kitchen looks like - piles of washing up that "will be done tomorrow, I promise"

I have somehow survived on the amount I've drank and the fact I've probably eaten twice my body weight in pasta and jarred tomato and basil sauce. But one day I did cook for myself and my flatmate by surprising her with my steak-cooking skills!

The steak meal in discussion - including the homemade peppercorn sauce that sounds revolting on paper but tastes and smells perfect in person.

I made my own peppercorn sauce out of Vodka, gin, pink lemonade, ground pepper, baking powder, gravy, milk and butter - and it tasted like it had been made in a top restaurant (if I say so myself). If anything, it was very peppery and if it wasn't eaten fast enough, it would solidify and slide off your steak! If you want the recipe, just private message me!

I gave a talk to aspiring medical students for Villiers Park based on my experiences.

I've had the honour as well to be invited back to my school to give a talk regarding future aspirations post-18. Before this though, I was invited back to give a presentation to aspiring medical students at Villiers Park (in MedSoc that I was once part of) and explaining what it's like to be a first year medical student, how to get in and if medicine does seem what I expected! The students that attended (30+ I think!) asked some great questions throughout the slides and I can't believe that this time last year I was sat in their seats listening to a guy give a talk in MedSoc.

I recommended they read this blog, so they could be viewing this article with you!

Until next term, have a great Easter!

Birthday Blues - away from home!

All of the cards I got to open on my 19th birthday at uni.

I don't know whether you guys are in the same boat as me, but I am a March baby. Therefore, just like other years, my birthday has always fallen in the centre of a school term so I'm used to having to spend the day at school before I come home and celebrate my birthday. But for the firs time, I was actually away for my birthday at university!

I was dreading it, but my flatmates made my birthday great! I enjoyed every second of it! They threw a surprise party for me when I got home from university with presents and a collection of photos of us all and they also posted embarrassing photos and videos of me on social media for my birthday!

I video messaged my family from my halls, which wasn't the same but as good as it gets. I took all of my cards to uni so I could at least open something from home, but I really did enjoy spending my 19th birthday with great people.

I love fish (and am a fishkeeper myself) so my flatmates made me a sea themed cake! And it tasted amazing!

We then went out, dressed as the Spice Girls for the themed night at the student nightclub. My birthday was a Monday, so it's student tradition (like a religion!) to go out and we celebrated my birthday! My flatmate, who has never gone to a club before and doesn't usually drink alcohol, came out especially for my birthday which made it even better!

Labs - about talking?

This might be hard to understand, but we do have labs...not in labs...and not a pipette in sight!

These labs are based on consultation skills. They are endorsed with our placements, either in the GP or the hospital, which in turn strengthen the lectures and tutorials on a particular aspect of the consultation.

The consultation is broken up into different elements. These elements obviously craft together to make the perfect consultation with the purpose of finding out what is wrong with the patient (by taking a history and an examination) and then interpreting your findings to come to a conclusion and then a plan of action (such as medication).

If we are given a part of the consultation, like examining the complaint which is being presented to us by the patient, we will have a lecture on this. In the lecture, we will be taught about the purpose of taking a history of a presented complaint, and the type of questions we will have to ask. We can even hear of examples of when this goes wrong, or poor practice in doctor consultations that leads to poor outcome for the patient.

After the lecture, we meet in our small tutorial groups of around eight peers and discuss what we have learnt from the lecture. These are our "labs".

These labs involve a lot of role play. Such as acting out particular consultation scenarios, structured by a plan that has been prepared for the session. For example, we could be pretending to be Mr Smith who has a family history of cardiovascular disease and I have just presented very high blood pressure and need to answer my peer's questions (as the doctor) to help them breakdown my presented complaint to build up a possible diagnosis and plan of action.

These lectures and tutorials can be delivered either in the university or the hospital I'm doing my placements in.

The labs also involve developing communication. My university's Medicine course was updated last year (I'm the first cohort) to provide more teaching on the communication aspect of being a doctor. Imagine having a doctor who didn't know how to talk to you or deliver the information correctly or understandably. Therefore, this year they are focusing on providing more teaching on this! So in the labs, we learn how to use vocal cues in our consultations to give better understanding (eg. the importance of paraphrasing to show understand and using it as an opportunity to make sure you've collected all of the relevant points).

For example, we ask patients "What is your past medical history?" and they often think only of diseases and illnesses. They'll tell you about their pneumonia or chest pain ... but they always forget surgery! So make sure you ask whether or not the patient has had any recent surgery, as this can explain symptoms. Abdomen pain can sometimes be explained by previous surgery in this region creating weakness in the bowel.

Exam Results

When I left you before Christmas, I described about my stresses of exam revision over the holidays but also the structure of the exams I took part in.

I can happily say I have passed both exams! Thankfully, I have clearly revised what I had needed to for my advantage and have managed to somehow score greater than that pass percentage so that my grade sits in "green".

We were sent a generic email prior to our exam release time (which is set at a certain time and date, so we had to wait until 1:00pm for our results to be released). In the email, it was detailed what the pass mark was for both exams, and a general average. As it appears in the email, on average everyone has passed which is great for the year group!

But now that these exams are over, we get to move on and knuckle down more into the case-based learning aspect of our course.

A small side note though, I did take part in a fairly difficult consultation while completing my GP placement. While sat in the GP surgery, the GP I was shadowing met a patient who was battling with depression. He had progressed to a serious stage, where he contemplated ending his life and his value in this world. I found it very interesting to observe how the GP approached the patient's feelings to help break down the presented complaint in a comfortable matter.

To be honest, the appointment really hit me as I sat there. Hearing how the patient was describing his own worth, I realised how important mental health and wellbeing really is. Its significance is often suppressed. I, myself, have battled with mental health issues in the past with low mood (but I am grateful for the prescription medication which helped me get back on track). But today I witnessed when medication isn't the answer as the complaint is far more serious.

My partner and I from the placement then went home to discuss how we felt. Sometimes it is very important to speak openly but privately (respecting confidentiality) if you are struggling to cope. Many universities, including mine, have specialised student support which is readily available for you to approach and seek help if you do need it.

I feel for the situation you are going through right now, as I have experienced it myself. Whether it be application stress or exam stress, you can pull through this! Don't let it affect your mood, and if it does, monitor it closely. If you notice your mood deteriorating fast, whether it be a personality change (for the worse) or your attention/concentration being very weak, seek help and support and you'll be back to normal. Remember though, talk and use these support networks.

It was nice to sit down and enjoy a bottle of wine with a friend in the bar conservatory, talking about our results.

Week 6-8

One bit of advice my teacher gave me during Summer 2017 before I went to university, was to read over all of my A-Level notes on chemistry and biology. Therefore, when I wasn't spending time with my friends or working in my part time job, I was reading about the mitochondria or learning again about the chemical functional groups of different compounds.

If I'm completely honest with you, I wouldn't do that. For the past seven weeks now, the lectures have mainly been about bridging this gap between those medical students who have completed Biology A-Level, and those medical students that hadn't. In a "put your hand up" kind of situation in one of the biology lectures, I would say around 60% of medical students at my uni have got a Biology A-Level. Therefore, this beginning unit has concentrated on making sure everyone is aware of the same biological processes that occur in the human body.

Respiration, genetics, cell organelles - all of that, you don't need to go over necessarily prior to joining university. Obviously do it for your own knowledge and understanding, but it's not a necessity as you will cover it in those initial lectures. I'm all mitochondria-ed out now!

It's also my final time in the anatomy lab for this year which I am quite gutted about. I really did enjoy learning about anatomy through the use of prosected cadavers. I would recommend that before you enter the lab, I would take along any clinical diagrams or anatomy labelled images that would aid your learning in the lab. For example, whilst learning the digestive tract it helped to take in a diagram of the gastrointestinal system to work out the distribution of different organs. It's crucial to say that the organs do not appear exactly in the same way as they do in diagrams, so it does make it harder to identify. But sometimes, learning the function of an organ can help moreso than learning its actual anatomy and actual location in the body.

You also need to ensure you get your lefts and rights the right way round! Remember, it's THEIR body and not your way of perceiving, so the heart is on the LEFT side of the body, despite it would be your "right" as you're viewing them! This took me forever to grasp.

And back to the social side of university...the nights out are amazing. I would definitely recommend you do make an attempt to go out because you will have the opportunity to widen your friendship circle and develop many strong relationships. Obviously the last main night out was Halloween which was cheap on a students' night, but I made the mistake of plastering myself in facepaint that I did struggle to remove despite all of the soaps I used in the shower. It did mean I did turn up to my lecture with a green neck, that thankfully only lasted the day!