"How cool are dictaphones?" "stop", "new paragraph"

Today I had my first surgery at my GP placement. This means that I've got patients of my own, real...live...patients! I have my own room, my own computer, my own sign on the door, my own button on the computer to send in my own patients and all sorts of other cool stuff which I'll come onto later.

Throughout the last couple of years at other gp's I've always been able to see patients on my own before they see the GP but not to the extent that I can now. Now I have my own surgeries built into the computer system and the receptionists book patients in to see me... they must all be stark raving bonkers.

Anyway, it was great fun. That feeling I had from my elective where I felt like I was actually being a doctor came flooding back, although fortunately for the patients I'm still heavily supervised. My GP supervisor has slots in her surgery to come and check on me, make sure I'm not going to kill anyone and sign any prescriptions etc etc.

This morning I had 5xhalf hour slots - so the patients are actually getting a good deal, they get to spend 3 times as much time with me as they do with the doctor. Although most appointments don't tend to take that long, by the time I've worked out how the computer works and written up the histories (hopefully without referring them accidental for a vasectomy.) that half hour is soon gone. My first patient this morning was 40 minutes early, he must have been excited to see me.

It was an odd morning actually, 3 of my 5 patients went away with referrals to the hospital - 2 under the 2 week rule for the same thing. This of course meant that I had to do the referral letters - or more precisely I had to dictate them! This was by far the highlight of the morning, I'd always wanted to play with a dictaphone and dictate my own letters - it was unbelievably cool. So cool in fact that it took me about 40 minutes to dictate my 3 letters because I kept changing my mind about what I wanted to say and I kept recording over myself by accident. I used to sit in clinics and listen to consultants dictate their letters adding all sorts of weird and wonderful phrases wondering when I'd get my hands on a dictaphone. I kept my letters very professional - I dread to think what the consultants will think of them when they get them though - I'm sure I probably filled them with useless information about entirely irrelevant things but not to worry. Ok, I'll stop now, maybe I'm slightly too over-excited by this dictaphone thing, after all - referrals aren't generally that good for the patients.

Anyway, I didn't kill anyone, and even managed to come up with decent management plans. I really enjoyed myself, hopefully I didn't scare the patients too much.

Afternoon surgery starts at 4pm this afternoon, is it really bad that I hope somebody needs referring so I can dictate another letter?

Foundation School Allocations

Well the results are out, and I'm very pleased to announce that I was allocated to my first choice foundation school - (more details coming to The Real Little medic later). The results were not supposed to be out until after 8am but apparently they were out just after midnight.

I'm well pleased to have got my first choice. The second stage is to rank individual programmes (jobs basically). Although I don't yet know the details of this process, it may be that I have to go through all 240+ jobs and put them in order of the ones I'd like or it may just be a case of ranking 20 or so and hope for the best. I assume details of part 2 will surface over the next couple of days.

Hope everyone else got their first choice and good luck with picking your programmes.

UPDATE: - I have to rank all 287 jobs in preference order. That should be fun.

New Firm, New World

I've not done a medical firm for a while and it was a bit of a shock to the system when I started my new firm this week. I've been used to the relatively relaxed surgical specialties for a while. Surprisingly I'm loving it! Although its only been 2 days, I'm already getting quite into it despite the long days that I'm not really used to.

Yesterday was my first day, the registrar is off on holiday, the SHO was off sick and the consultant was busy. It was left to the F1 to do a ward round so I tagged along with him. The F1 is really nice, I learnt lots and found it really interesting. There weren't too many patients on our list though each one had their own complex issues. Its supposed to be a gastro firm so why one of our patients is a myeloma patient i've got no idea, it was certainly interesting the two of us trying to take care of this guy (neither of us know much about myeloma) trying to arrange an MRI for query cord compression was a challenge, and I ended up getting shouted at down the phone by a neurologist who didn't want to do his MRI. I left at 5pm, having not even had a 2 minute break all day, I was knackered, god knows how the F1 was feeling, he didn't leave till 7 and he'd done a 14 hour shift the day before.

This morning, I arrived promptly and helped out the F1 by doing some of his jobs, before 9am I'd done all the blood forms and spoken to a nursing home to find out the normal condition of one of our patients. The SHO turned up shortly after 9 and I'd been forewarned about her by the F1, he wasn't wrong, she wasn't the friendliest person in the world but there is always one bad egg isn't there? The consultant came along and it was decided that I should just shadow the F1 for most of my time on the firm which I'm really happy to do as I've already learnt plenty, including lots of tips about being an F1 which will come in handy. I enjoyed the ward round and after lunch (fortunately we had time for lunch today which was kindly bought for me by the F1) I stayed and helped with the jobs. To round the day off, I did an ABG on an old lady with annoyingly mobile arteries, fortunately I hit it, which is surprising as I've not done it for since early in 3rd year!

I'm really enjoying this medical firm, despite yesterday's 8 hour ward round. I'm even surprising myself. I'm looking forward to getting stuck in over the next 4 weeks and getting some really good experience shadowing the F1. I just hope when the F1s change in December that I get a decent replacement...

Life is gooooood.

1) missbliss is back from Devon so I'm not bored and lonely anymore
2) Research project finished and handed in
3) 5 minute presentation is prepared for Wednesday
4) Saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix yesterday and it was AMAZING!
5) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is out TOMORROW! And I'm SO excited about it!
6) We're leaving on our elective/holiday a week on Monday (I'm starting to think that I really should know some medicine first)
7) Everything is falling into place for said elective
8) I've addressed the problems I had with my recent OSCE results (see The Real Little Medic) (if you don't have an invite, drop me an email and I'll see if you're allowed)
9) I passed my recent exams well and have no more until finals!

So yeah, all is good at the moment. Bring on the end of term on Thursday and final preparations for our elective. Oh, and moving house in between. Busy, but exciting times.

To all those who read it, enjoy Harry Potter. I know I will

p.s. For those of you that were worried about missing me and missbliss (I know there will be at least 1 of you) for the 2 and a half months that we're away, I've worked out how to post here via email so we might be able to keep you updated, although goodness knows how regularly!

Spring and its lovely wonderfulness!

Forgive me for going a bit crazy but for once I've got very little to moan about. I love Spring, it is by far the best season, and it makes me so happy. On top of that, today is officially my last day of obs and gynae. Fingers crossed I won't have to go near it again in the future.

I want to spend my time dancing in fields of sunshine and happiness. Unfortunately the burden of revision still hangs over me. It isn't going brilliantly but I'm too happy to be worrying about that. The weather this week has been superlicious! Yesterday me and missbliss went to a farm to see the baby animals. (I realise I'm not doing much for my masculinity by admitting such activities but I don't care.) They are SO cute, I love lambs and chicks, even little piglets make me chuckle. (Aren't they just the cutest things you've ever seen:)

Unfortunately my videos of the lambs jumping around being oh so cute didn't work :( Oh well, perhaps we'll have to pay another visit before the season is over.

Spring also makes me happy because it reminds me of when I met missbliss 2 years ago, another reason that spring is beautiful. Even though there are always exams in springtime it is still the best time of year. I wish it could be spring all year round. If only we could spend all day sitting around on the grass, having a picnic by a stream with lambs jumping around us, life would be perfect.

Spring is like a drug, if you could bottle it up and sell it, I'd by it by the truckload!

Nothing is going to upset me this week as long as the weather stays nice.

May I wish everyone a happy Easter, make sure you all take time out just to rejoice in the loveliness!
* goes off to daydream about springtime.............*