It's my 21st this month. This weekend was my chance to celebrate. It never FAILS to amaze me how utterly, woefully, wilfully ignorant my generation is as regards alcohol consumption. Sure that apple sourz shot is fun, that tipsy feeling, the triumphant shoe wobble and giggle that denotes the start of a good night; it's fun, its a bit rebellious and liberating. But units-wise? Three or even four times time a week (during the vac, don't even get me started on uni termtime) the guys will go out and drink 4-5 lagers as a (pre-lash) ending up with maybe 2 or 3 pints then move onto the club where mathmatical ability is left along with bags and coats in the cloakroom. This is ridiculous, 70-80 units a week! HOW. And my female friends are as bad, having maybe 8-10 drinks in one night, every week, often two or three times a week. One even keeps a vodka stash in her car 'for emergencies'. It seems no destination is possible without ethanolic fuel.
I don't criticise my friends, snatch the drinks away. Is this wrong? I'm a medical student and in ten years time these people are going to be my problem. At the moment I fetch glasses of water, I'll sit holding hair out of the way of projectile vomit. But soon its gonna be about ordering liver transplants, noting cirrhosis let alone the little accidents that happen under the influence. I don't think people appreciate the damage they're doing. Whose job is it to make them?
Tell you one thing, god knew what he was doing when he figured livers should regenerate ^^
Sunday 12 September 2010
Thursday 9 September 2010
The Beginning of Everything
Well this isn't really the beginning. I'm a third year medic, this means I have two years of 'studying medicine' to my name but I am still four years away from qualifying and a lifetime away from competence. I can point at an MRI scan and nervously mutter about sub-arachnoid haemorrages, blithely point out strokes in the internal capsule, mutter about Small-Cell-Lung Cancer, reel out the symptoms of Cushings, happily diss the GP who has told an acquaintance they have Glandular Fever (I stoichly maintained they didn't) but am still less use than a minnow in the Sahara without a tail.
Unlike most contemporaries I have worked on a ward, not as a shadowy medical student, but as the lowest of the low, a Healthcare Assistant. I have seen the appalling way hospital staff treat their inferiors and the awe, dislike, fear and tolerance with which they are regarded. I have cleaned up poo, vomit and sick, tried to explain to someone's sixteen year old son that I can't give his 35 year old mother a sip of water that she is begging for so heart-wrenchingly, because she has had a stroke, and if her gag reflex has been lost then it could be inhaled and kill her. Then at the other side I've sat at a consultant's shoulder and watched him tell a man he will restore his sight. I sit and write essays about calcium regulation versus adipose regulation, how we maintain our Pa O2 on Mount Everest, whether the retina is wired for fine resolution or global illumination, and I've emptied someone's catheter bag.
Medicine is a world of extremes. The cleverest people (I am not referring to myself) do the dirtiest jobs, and the highs and lows are those of absolute humanity, life and death, sickness and health. No-one is immune. Doctors see patients at their lowest ebb and I am terrified that in a matter of half a decade I have to be contributing to decisions that affect someone's most primitive needs, someone that has outlived me already by maybe sixty seventy years and after 6 years of reading books I get the right to tell them what to do.
I have The Fear. But also the Excitement. Medical school is a happy bubble of saving lives and finding cures. HCA work is a miserable(ish) world of incontinence and disability. Somewhere there is a medium.
Meanwhile, while working as a clinic clerk I would like herby to promote Handwriting Ethics to all healthcare professionals. I cannot read your writing. Do you mean 12 weeks or 12 months? Do you mean 'refraction','referral' ,'reminder', 'renal' or 'renewal'? WRITE IN BLOCK CAPS. If I could take over the NHS for a day (optimistic) this would be one of my first implementations. Followed by slapping consultants that book patients into clincs in 3 weeks time when the consultant themself is actually in Dubai/Saudi Arabia/California/Milan (delete as appropriate) and has CANCELLED it. No I do not want to Overbook or ring Mr *Cole's nice secretary. I want you to write 4 weeks.
Also I am getting upset by the EWD's. And it won't even matter when I qualify. Argh.
Unlike most contemporaries I have worked on a ward, not as a shadowy medical student, but as the lowest of the low, a Healthcare Assistant. I have seen the appalling way hospital staff treat their inferiors and the awe, dislike, fear and tolerance with which they are regarded. I have cleaned up poo, vomit and sick, tried to explain to someone's sixteen year old son that I can't give his 35 year old mother a sip of water that she is begging for so heart-wrenchingly, because she has had a stroke, and if her gag reflex has been lost then it could be inhaled and kill her. Then at the other side I've sat at a consultant's shoulder and watched him tell a man he will restore his sight. I sit and write essays about calcium regulation versus adipose regulation, how we maintain our Pa O2 on Mount Everest, whether the retina is wired for fine resolution or global illumination, and I've emptied someone's catheter bag.
Medicine is a world of extremes. The cleverest people (I am not referring to myself) do the dirtiest jobs, and the highs and lows are those of absolute humanity, life and death, sickness and health. No-one is immune. Doctors see patients at their lowest ebb and I am terrified that in a matter of half a decade I have to be contributing to decisions that affect someone's most primitive needs, someone that has outlived me already by maybe sixty seventy years and after 6 years of reading books I get the right to tell them what to do.
I have The Fear. But also the Excitement. Medical school is a happy bubble of saving lives and finding cures. HCA work is a miserable(ish) world of incontinence and disability. Somewhere there is a medium.
Meanwhile, while working as a clinic clerk I would like herby to promote Handwriting Ethics to all healthcare professionals. I cannot read your writing. Do you mean 12 weeks or 12 months? Do you mean 'refraction','referral' ,'reminder', 'renal' or 'renewal'? WRITE IN BLOCK CAPS. If I could take over the NHS for a day (optimistic) this would be one of my first implementations. Followed by slapping consultants that book patients into clincs in 3 weeks time when the consultant themself is actually in Dubai/Saudi Arabia/California/Milan (delete as appropriate) and has CANCELLED it. No I do not want to Overbook or ring Mr *Cole's nice secretary. I want you to write 4 weeks.
Also I am getting upset by the EWD's. And it won't even matter when I qualify. Argh.
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