Finals, part 2

Wednesday 19th May.  Clinical finals day 2.  This time it was my turn to be in the morning group and at the other hospital in the city centre.

My first patient was clearly very pregnant and I was suddenly very thankful that we had spent the previous week practicing obstetric histories and examination.  One of the examiners was my old GP tutor from the 4th year, and turned out to be a reassuring presence.  Many of the questions they asked seemed fairly specialised and I found myself telling them I would ask for specialist advice or look up a drug’s safety before prescribing as I couldn’t be sure of its effect in pregnancy.  But I think this was the answer they were after.  Patient number 2 was, once again, a complicated neurological case and very similar to my second patient from the previous day.  Again, I fumbled through the questions they asked, but again, one of the examiners was another GP tutor from 4th year, so I was a bit more relaxed.

The afternoon was free in the sense that I had now potentially finished my finals, but wouldn’t find out for sure until the next morning.  A strange system is operated here, whereby one third of the year is recalled to do two extra days of exams.  However, we are not told if we are part of that third until 10 o’clock the morning before.  So, there’s not much to do, but go to the beach and try not to think about it.  One extra afternoon’s revision just in case isn’t going to help anyone.

Thursday 20th May.  The morning we find out if we are called back is a strange one.  As a house, we all got up early and sat around the living room in silence, drinking tea and watching the most innocuous thing we could find on the early morning TV schedule.  For the first time in weeks, Hospital Heroes gave way to Postman Pat.  After 10am, we took 5 minute shifts at checking our emails to find out when the results arrived.  Anyway, they were finally released and, somehow, I’d not been recalled.

It’s such a strange feeling suddenly to reach the culmination of 5 years of study and a whole lot longer of applications and inquiries and applications again.  The celebrations were slightly tempered by the fact that a few friends had to return for the extended days and a few were still waiting on the official results.  These came out a couple of weeks ago and happily we are all now in the same position.

Graduation Ball was last night.  Maybe some photos of that to come.