Sorry! Late post! Been rushed off my feet with all these subjects, but I'm doing really well, I'm so proud of myself! yayyy!
Anyway....
Heres my thoughts and notes from the last lecture!
The lecturer was amazing! He didn't look like your typical doctor, he was funny and
human. Which is great because you mostly hear doctors saying they have to become more robotic and inhuman to be unaffected by whats going on around them. And I totally understand, but being human now and again, can't hurt, can it?
Right so, Emergency medicine!
-Its the field of practice based on knowledge, skills required for the prevention, diagnosis and management of acute and urgent aspects of illness and injury.
-Patients of all age groups
-Patients have "undifferentiated" presentations (they don't know the problem)
-Any age group, time, body system
Specialists in
- Resuscitation
- Initial management of trauma
- 'Minor' injuries
- Major incident management
- Front door diagnostic and treatments strategies
- Short stay / observation medicine
How to get there -
-FY1 / FY2 ~ two years (Foundation years 1 & 2, if you don't know what that is, its the first two years you do as a junior doctor after you've left med school doing 6 month rotations of different specialities)
-Acute care common stem CT1 / CT2 ~ two years (Core training year 1 and core training year 2)
-CT3 ~ one year
-ST4 / ST5 / ST6 ~ three years (Subspeciality training)
-CCT in Emergency medicine ~ eight years
The lecturer told us he worked 82 hour weekends, obviously we were all surprised and wondered whether that was even possible!
One thing he said that really struck out to me was "It's hard to be a good doctor, if you're not happy," which is really true. We all have to find that balance between work and play because it can tremendously affect how we work! So I find this quote applicable to all walks of life, even if you aren't a doctor ! I loved what he said, so I'm going to see if I can apply it to my life when I become a doctor. :)
Pros of Emergency medicine
- Exciting
- Different
- Funny
- Team approach
- Multi-disciplinary
Cons
- Follow ups - Never really get to develop relationships with your patients.
- Out of hours work
- No private practice
Overall he said, EM is fun, intellectually stimulating and hard work!
I really loved the lecture, I thought it was the best so far. Definately considering doing EM although paediatrics / Obstetrics and Gynaecology is my preferred speciality. But for EM, I don't think I could live with the immense pressure that comes from it. It seems to be the most draining speciality (not to say they all aren't).
So the next lecture I'm going to is the obstetrics and gynaecology lecture (yayyyyyyy!) I can't go to the next one (Addiction: Why do people use drugs and what can Doctors do about it?) and honestly, I think I should miss out on the one after (Psychiatric medicine: Are you mad?) I really need to catch up with my studies!
I'll post more tomorrow! I'll have more time then!
Found some interesting schemes for those interested in medicine!
Bye for now!
Happy studying!
:)
