Its the end of the year, 'fore we know it

And just like that another year has gone, HSC kiddies have mostly finished exams, some University students have... and we're about to start our StuVac. Firstly, to those who have been keeping track of this blog, you may be scratching your heads as to how a post (the one just before this one) supposedly posted on August, somehow was not there in August...or in September, or in October.

Did you time travel?

Did the blog time travel?

Did the internet time travel?

Is time travel even possible?

All important questions, yes (and perhaps not, apparently there was a paper published regarding a theoretical proof against the possibility of time travel). But then how did it get there? Simply put, I was busy. So I actually wrote half of it in August, left it as a draft, and forgot about it until today, when I was brushing my teeth, getting ready to go to sleep.

Yeah, I'm a bit random like that.

Neither my toothbrush, toothpaste, nor bathroom are in any way reminiscent of this blog, medicine, or even an indication of something I've forgotten to do.

So it's the end of my rotations and the end of my first clinical year. Towards the end of my last surgical rotation, it was pretty cruise-y as we were placed in a different hospital, but needed to go to our base hospital for tutorials and such (which happened quite frequently) - and I had multiple meetings for various councils and committees which took up an annoying amount of time. The rotation was general/maxillofacial, but as it was all elective surgery that we had seen at our base hospital, and maxillofacial essentially consisted of pulling out teeth (and only one day a week at that), the surgery itself was rather uninteresting. I may have shot my own foot when I said that surgery was interesting in my last post - yes it is, but only if you're doing it. It's like the game of cricket.

Oops. May have offended a few people there.

Moving on...

So it's come up to exams, and just a month prior we had our third-year OSCEs. The biggest change from OSCEs of previous years was that there were patients with real symptoms and signs... something that shook things up a little! People found that they were running out of time with exams as their polished routine for the examination of a normal person was suddenly routed with the presence of a sign that needed further investigation. Of course, we all encounter that on the wards, but those are usually never timed, and fall in place with a nice, long, detailed 20 minute history. Personally I didn't run out of time, but fudged a few things, which probably reflected in my OSCE mark, which whilst was a pass was hardly anything inspiring. Probably a reason why I've forgotten about this and wanted to focus on studies...

It's much the same this year as the last - a short-answer question (SAQ) paper, an MEQ/SAQ paper, and two multiple choice papers. The content I'd expect would be significantly more clinical in orientation, but I still expect a good amount of pathophysiology and mechanisms, as opposed to definitive treatments. We had a formative exam which wasn't terribly difficult, so I think it should be good, as long as everyone studies. Did I mention that no-one has failed third year yet? No-one in the past two cohorts. So we're really crossing our fingers that our grade isn't the first to sport a third-year casualty. Given that fourth year does not have barrier exams (however I've heard of people failing individual rotations), passing the third-year exams essentially means a ticket to the final fifth year exams.

And then shortly after that, we'd graduate, become interns, and then be responsible for patient lives. Phew.

Back to now - study caps on, and I'll hope to do another post from the other side. To others doing exams or having completed them, good luck and hope your preparation pays off :)

Busy as a bee can be

As one may have noticed, my rate of posting has really, really slowed down. I guess it's inevitable thing that happens as priorities pile up, and I've noticed the same goes for computer games and watching TV series - all huge time-wasters that eventually have little to no place in my life anymore... for once, I'm seeing some truth in the stereotype that games are for kids, the adult's life seems too busy to regularly follow the games scene, especially since it is so fast-paced.

Anyway, third-year placements came out just a few days ago. I'm especially thrilled because not only do I have the closest hospitals to my home possible (Blacktown and Mt Druitt) but also because the rotations that I got happened to be amongst my top preferences! For those who don't know, UWS' medical degree from years 3-5 is essentially full-time clinical rotations, which involve you being attached with a medical or surgical team for the large bulk of the year, in the hospitals; with some time being given to other types of attachments such as Medicine In Context, which I'm still not quite crystal clear on. So yes, this means that second year already marks the end of our "university" university experience; I recently attended a friend's 20th, which was surprisingly lavish for a 20th - one of my other's friend's speeches remarked upon the idea that the party was so lavish because it was the last year our grade would be together as a combined cohort, and I suddenly felt quite moved. Yes, we will see each other during conference weeks (epically long days of lecture after lecture for a week) and in hospital, but not in the frequency as we do at the moment. I guess it was appropriate, then, that the party had quite a 'year 12 formal' feel to it.

So, I'm only two weeks away from our summative OSCE, one day away from an event I'm co-organising as part of the student union, and a few days away from a week-long sports event that a student collective at UWS Campbelltown is organising. Oh, and if you're curious, we made a promo video for the week: Inter-Society Sports Week on Youtube. Busy as a bee can be, you see.

Hip hip hooray

You could treat this title both literally and sarcastically.
In a literal sense (always good to break the good news first, right?), my summer holidays have just been planned out for me! UWS sent out letters for acceptance into their SSRS (Student Summer Research Scholarship - 6-8 weeks full-time on a research project) and I received one in the mail a few days ago. So it looks like I'll at least be doing something constructive this summer. I also turned 18 recently (kind of hard to perpetuate the med-students-are-drinkers culture if you can't legally drink) but I haven't exploited any of my newly-found (for me) privileges yet. Might see whether I can get a credit card (I am a very, very responsible spender) or my personal Paypal account (Once again, very responsible). I think 18 seems quite young to be given all these privileges though - but meh, who am I to complain, hehe. I've also managed to resurrect my PDA from the dead, thanks to a factory settings hard reset (basically an entire wipe-down of the PDA) - so I'm hopefully going to be using that as a learning(read: procrastination) device for times when a netbook is inappropriate (whipping out a netbook during ward rounds? hmmm....)
PPD today, our last session for this year, was pretty good; we did our health professionals informal speech presentation thing, and had some really interesting insights; for example, the differing viewpoints of consultants, trainee doctors, and patients.
Sarcastically, it is drawing ever so closer to the final exams - only two and a bit weeks left. We received our practice anatomy test results back, and suffice to say, my mark was hardly amazing. We also have our formative OSCEs tomorrow (clinical examinations), for which the majority of our grade are panicking about (including yours truly). So.... in essence, HSC students, do not worry about nearing the end of exams and stress; there's plenty more awaiting you!

Out of Breath

The first time I've ever wanted to really be over 18 was yesterday, when I was in the city meeting up with some friends from other uni's. Until then, I saw no reason to be over 18 - I have a debit card, eBay account and Paypal account all *supported* by my father, and voting isn't too big a deal for me (although I do pay attention to politics, ironically). But when there was only me and my friend who came from Perth left, we went to look for dinner, and saw "$10 Buffet!" which, you know, was kind of enticing. Until we saw the bouncers.
Who directed us to another bar (which also mentioned "$10 meals") which apparently allowed under-18s...
Which rejected us again.
And so forth and so on ($6 steaks) until we couldn't take it (well, I couldn't) and we went to eat something else.

Anyway.
Formative exam was a massive screw-up; unlike last semester's formative which was a breeze, this formative was a lot closer to the difficulty of mid-semester exams - and since I winged this one, chances that I pass are not good. PBL was interesting - we just started the respiratory system and will finish it off by the end of this semester (surprisingly close - I can't believe the academic year is nearly over!)
We had updates on our anatomy spot test (where you identify various parts of a cadaver) which was to be summative (i.e. counted) and our OSCEs, which are formative (i.e. not counted). Apparently we'll be getting a practice run for the spot test, but not for the OSCEs - fair enough.
We have a one-week break now though - time to do some revision and catch-up, so I don't fail the end-of-sem exams. Aren't I lucky.

So Tired...

I thought I'd name some of my posts in honour of several of our PBL cases. So this one's an appropriate one to start off with. PPD today - a 3rd party recollection and informal presentation based on our patient barriers to care interview - was alright. It kind of killed the mood for the day though - 2 hours listening to person after person speak; it was HSC English speeches all over again, except a little bit more interesting, haha. I did concentrate though, which may or may not have been the right thing to do, as I was phased out for the rest of the day (it was first thing in the morning). I think our PPD tutor is getting better (obviously, no names); he genuinely does care, although presenting with a few rather conflicting ideas. Our next two sessions are all going to be about talking about ourselves. And our life experiences. YAY...
I've found that taking a few lectures off and a friday PBL session really knocks you back hard in terms of keeping up with what's happening. Everyone is talking about the cardiac cycle this week, and I feel that I don't really understand them. I'm not exactly a model student, but I do make a serious effort (this is medicine after all) - this kind of thing worries me; not because of whether I'll do good in an exam or not, but rather just the feeling of inadequacy. I guess one gets used to it as the entire field is littered with over-achievers; but still, it is nice to feel like you know something.
ICM though was once again as interesting as always. We had a patient with an arteriovenous (i.e. arteries and veins) fistula (a bulge or protrusion) in his wrist; the turbulence in the vessels was so noticeable, both via a stethoscope and by simply resting one's fingers on the area. We started the cardiovascular system exam; I do feel like we're making serious progress in ICM, with the abdominal exam out of the way in just a few weeks, cardiovascular for these few weeks, and probably respiratory in the weeks to come before our big OSCE (clinical examinations). ARGGGH SCARY
It's before our theoretical exams, in October. So close. Yikes.