The Start of a New Year

Today was my first day back after the Christmas break, which I should add, seemed to go ridiculously fast. You might have remembered that I'm now doing an 8 week GP placement and I've not exactly been looking forward to it. In fact I've been dreading it, I don't know why because sometimes when I get into it I quite enjoy my GP placements. Nevertheless, I wasn't feeling very enthused when I awoke this morning.

I arrived at the GPs early and was met by friendly reception staff. The surgery is split over 2 sites, one of which was briefly my own practice. I met my supervisor who seemed really nice, I have a feeling she is going to work me hard and expect quite a lot but that is no bad thing I suppose. I spent the morning with her, although it didn't exactly go to plan to start with. 3 of the first 4 patients refused to have me in. Fair enough I suppose. The rest of the morning was surprisingly quiet, there was only a trickle of patients and about the most interesting thing was an ear with raging otitis media.

All in all it wasn't the most interesting of mornings but I'm pleasantly surprised and slightly more optimistic about the next 8 weeks. I'm also fairly pleased with my timetable, it potentially looks like Tuesdays might be all-day study days which would be fabulous, 4 day weeks are just what I need. Perhaps I will enjoy it (at least a bit) after all. It will get a lot more interesting next week when I get to have my own surgery with half hour appointments of my own! I hope the patients know what is about to hit them.

The rest of the day was taken up by my favourite thing in the whole entire world, yes that's right - PBL. The groups have changed, although 4 people out of 8 didn't make it today, apparently they are still on holiday - how bloody nice for them!!! The process itself was just as boring as ever. I even spent half an hour trying to write a poem about PBL but I was so dispirited that my creative juices were flowing like treacle up a hill.

Back to the real world, here we go with 2008 - Happy New Year!

New Years Resolution Update: Today I went to the post office and they have these amazing wine gum things that I usually eat by the crate full. I had such an urge to have 'just one packet' but I didn't I managed to resist. I almost cracked by the chocolate machine too but will-power prevailed and so far so good, i've not had any sweets, chocolate, crisps or biscuits. COME ON!

The End of Days

18

18th December 2007
7 Days to go till Christmas

tlm fact: My 4 Favourite films are Leon, My Life Without Me, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Lilya-4-ever.

Not quite the end of the world I know but term is finished for Christmas. Yipee, no more early mornings for a while. Won't be back in hospital now until March. That makes me a sad bunny because it means that i've got 8 weeks of community (GPs) to go back to on the 2nd of January, 2nd of Jan, what the hell is that about. Jeez. Last time I did community it was ok, and I quite enjoyed it but i'm dreading it this time, not least because i've been hearing very very bad things about the practice i'm going to! And for 8 weeks, the only respite will be PBL on a wednesday afternoon - great!

Hopefully i'll be proved wrong but we shall see, watch this space, i'm sure it'll give me plenty to blog about if nothing else.

In the mean time i'm going to enjoy Christmas.

Good News

I wrote recently about an elderly lady who I'd been to see, I suspected some sinister pathology and the GP referred her under the 2-week rule for urgent investigations. I followed her up today and was pleased to see that her tests had come back. Other than a bit of oesophagitis the tests were negative, oesophagitis doesn't really explain her symptoms but its a much better diagnosis than what it might have been. I was really pleased that she is ok.

It was my last day at my GP today and I'm sad to be leaving. I've learnt a lot. It was a great placement with a great GP. Much much much better than the previous placement which was nothing short of a disaster. Now I have to pick an 8 week community placement for my 5th and final year, unfortunately none of the good GPs I've been to seem to be offering placements. Tits.

In other good news - only 5 days left of obs and gynae!