Still a way to go
The phrase "trust me, I'm a medical student" has never been coined. Nor should it ever be.
The inglorious highlight of this week was undoubtedly clinical placement, which saw me cheerfully tell my GP tutor that his patient had spina bifida. This was not a good thing to have done for a number of reasons.
1) The patient did not have spina bifida. The patient had never had spina bifida. In fact, spina bifida had not been mentioned the whole day until this point. (I was trying to say 'spondylosis'.)
2) The patient was sitting right in front of me when I made this devastating pronouncement. Fortunately for me, she had a lot of grace for medical students and just smiled.
3) Spina bifida is a serious condition in the development of the embryo and foetus and affects new born babies. This patient was 82.
I really don't know where it came from. Spina bifida was just a name beginning with 's' that my brain picked at random and chose to send through my mouth in the direction of my tutor, who, incidentally, would be conducting my appraisal in about half and hour's time. And this only a few minutes after I'd told a 74 year old man at high risk of osteoporosis that he probably didn't need to take the medication he'd been prescribed for increasing bone mass. (In my defence, I had just been asked a direct question by the doctor about it. I just answered wrong.)
I'm beginning to understand why it isn't common practise in traditional medical education to send medical students anywhere near patients until at least the 3rd year.
The inglorious highlight of this week was undoubtedly clinical placement, which saw me cheerfully tell my GP tutor that his patient had spina bifida. This was not a good thing to have done for a number of reasons.
1) The patient did not have spina bifida. The patient had never had spina bifida. In fact, spina bifida had not been mentioned the whole day until this point. (I was trying to say 'spondylosis'.)
2) The patient was sitting right in front of me when I made this devastating pronouncement. Fortunately for me, she had a lot of grace for medical students and just smiled.
3) Spina bifida is a serious condition in the development of the embryo and foetus and affects new born babies. This patient was 82.
I really don't know where it came from. Spina bifida was just a name beginning with 's' that my brain picked at random and chose to send through my mouth in the direction of my tutor, who, incidentally, would be conducting my appraisal in about half and hour's time. And this only a few minutes after I'd told a 74 year old man at high risk of osteoporosis that he probably didn't need to take the medication he'd been prescribed for increasing bone mass. (In my defence, I had just been asked a direct question by the doctor about it. I just answered wrong.)
I'm beginning to understand why it isn't common practise in traditional medical education to send medical students anywhere near patients until at least the 3rd year.
posted by Michael at 2:07 am
4 Comments:
I think my colleague are probably getting a litle annoyed at my frequent reading out loud of your posts, but it just has to be done - the joy MUST be shared. You've provoked much mirth in the LCET office. God bless you sir.
Yes Ian, the medical school was designed around a new system that's worked for some years in the States. The idea is to get us learning wholistically and so includes clinical experience from the third week of the course. It has its advantages, in that all these mistakes can be learnt from early on. But it also means we get thrown in at the deep end with practically no medical knowledge. Most of the established (in fact, I think, all of the established) medical schools in the country divide the course into 2 or 3 years of academia followed by 2 or 3 years of clinical attatchment. The advantage being, if you decide medicine is not for you, you can graduate after 3 years with as a Bachelor of Biomedical Science. Alternatively, you can transfer to another university to do the clinical bit.
I'll be another 2 and half years before we produce our first doctors so noone really knows if it works yet. But we're hopeful.
Once again.. genius.. You are a star!!!
Hmmm,funny you should say that. I've been having a slight pinching sensation in the small of my back. Do you think it could be Osteo Perosis? Sounds cool.
Fair play, must take nuts to sit in and comment like that. Phew.
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