The Graduate Medicine Experience

Today a Consultant asked us what heart failure was. Us, as in a group of 13 well-educated medics with access to a wide range of resources and in the penultimate year of our education. One girl started listing the symptoms. In my mind, I was running through the typical pharmacological management. People brought up the long-term risks and complications. Someone started talking about renal failure.  Tsk, tsk, tsk, the Consultant kept shaking her head disapprovingly. All (or at least most) of what we were saying was correct, but it wasn't answering the question. What is the essence of heart failure? What does it mean? A diagnosis which we have heard and seen tens if not hundreds of times. May or may not have been the first condition I made a note on in my Notion app. What the God damn hell is it???  Well, as it turns out, heart failure is, to put it simply, when the heart pumps inefficiently. I think that was surprising to us, because we NEVER see patients on the wards or in GP or...

It's really tempting to go on Instagram, look at carefully curated posts of aesthetically pleasing views from endless holidays and long for the influencer life. In fact, I was doing just that up until 3 minutes ago, wishing I was anywhere but here, at my desk in Cambridge, in quarantine and having to 're-vise' lectures I haven't even 'vised' the first time round for my fast-approaching mock exams.  But didn't I get to do that up until a couple of days ago? I was fortunate enough to get 2 weeks of uninterrupted downtime over the holidays, where the only thing I did was switch between eating, watching movies and playing board games in my Christmas pyjamas. And I have to say, it got pretty boring pretty quickly. So why do I find myself in this position, wishing I had nothing else to do but rest up from all the resting up I have been doing?  Well, it's a simple logical fallacy - my life is a meal and I'm craving dessert. 'Dessert' as in that fina...

It's difficult to explain (or even comprehend) the extent to which medical school has changed my perspective on life. Medicine as a career aside, just going through the process of becoming a doctor and being in a clinical environment is... a character building experience to say the least.  I was talking to my best friend and struggling to put into words what has and what hasn't changed about me, but the only logical way I can explain it is this: imagine that your life is a canvas (tabula rasa and all that) and all your life experiences are shapes drawn on that canvas. Everything you go through in life leaves some mark and the overall 'picture' changes with time. Some situations will only be represented by a small speck somewhere on the canvas - a miniature detail that might only come up in conversation at 4 am while grabbing a kebab from the van outside the club (you know those conversations). Other life experiences will be so defining and monumental that they will form...

My life over the past two months has consisted of mainly two things: exams and clinical placements. Well, that and a little holiday in between. Not quite the 'bull riding and boobies' Lil Nas X sang about, but I have to admit I enjoy the pace of the graduate course - it certainly keeps you on your toes and you're never bored.  Switching gears from learning bony prominences and enzymes all day to talking to sweet old ladies with cankles really got me thinking about what it takes to be a doctor and if it really is all about being 'smart'. It's often portrayed as a career that demands high factual intelligence above all else, but it has been said before and I'll say it again: medicine is not all that complicated, there is just a lot of it. It's the classic old conundrum of quantity vs quality and it definitely doesn't take an impressive IQ to work your way through the material, just time and perseverance. In fact, I'll happily put my hand up and sa...

This is ended up being an obscenely long post, but I really wanted it to reflect the full reality of the experience. So, here is a record of my feelings towards studying medicine and working as a doctor over the past month while I was on clinical placement and actually living the reality of the dream: Monday 22.03 - We had to drive 39 miles to go to a hospital and get Covid swabs only for said swabs to be sent back to the main hospital which is 3 miles away from us. God, the NHS red tape is like no other.  Tuesday 23.03 - We are getting taught practical skills by a bunch of videos. I cannot wait to get my hands on patients and do things, if I am made to see one more video I swear... Wednesday 24.03 - Interesting conversations about clinical ethics and law, who can consent to what and what our duties are. It is insane how much power and responsibility is placed in doctors' hands regarding life's biggest decisions. Thursday 25.03 - More clinical ethics. On the other side, I just ...

The worst thing about tough times is that the only way out is through.  The past month of my life has been a perfect storm with a combination of a global pandemic, a national lockdown, a bank error which left me and my partner on the street between moving house and a VERY busy and demanding term at medical school. I have been struggling, to say the least.  But then I came across this video by Faye where she talks about the world of toxic productivity and it resonated with me so deeply. The harder I tried to swim and stay on top, the more I would sink and spin out into YouTube escapism.  What I wish I had done instead is taken the time to acknowledge that I find myself in some challenging circumstances and my life is arguably worse than its baseline. I do acknowledge that there are plenty of people out there who have it waaaay worse than I do, who have to go hungry or homeless, who have succumbed to illness or lost someone dear themselves.  But the thing about mental...