Ding! Round One

Today is Round 1 in the world of Scottish MTAS. I am nervous.

Today, those of us unlucky enough to not match any of our top six foundation programmes will be informed by email that we have to enter Round 2 and choose from the jobs that are left. If you matched one of your top six, you won’t hear anything.

I applied to Edinburgh for all of my choices – notoriously competitive, hence the nerves.

At noon today, my inbox is empty. So far so good. I’ll keep you posted.

Grandma? Moi?

I have a question for any guys who might be reading this. Medical guys, in particular, or any who wear ID badges to work really.

Is it really neccessary to wear it in the middle of your belt?

Because it means that if I am trying to work out who you are, I have to look almost directly at your crotch. If you have a particularly difficult name, I have to look at it for rather a long time. It’s not very enjoyable, and it makes me feel like a perv, when in fact I just want to know your name, and, where appropriate, your status.

A particularly nasty example of this happened to me not ‘alf an hour ago (as they might say in the dead parrot sketch) – there’s a guy working on my ward at the moment and I have no idea who he is. Apparently he’s a med student, but instead of wearing the easily-identifyable med student badge (about the shape of a bourbon biscuit and pin-on) he is wearing a badge which looks awfully like that of a doctor (credit card shaped and on a clip). He must be a student because nobody seems to know who he is, and he doesn’t seem to know anyone (or anything for that matter), but I find it pretty annoying that he has a doctor-like badge because he probably thinks it makes him look more like a doctor, because it’s very confusing.

Imagine what it would be like for the nurses, who don’t know any of us and sometimes need a doctor rather urgently – might they grab this rather gormless looking student, assuming he’s a doctor? What chaos could ensue.

Rant number two – along a similar theme: when I was a kid (read: junior medical student), it was a very well-known but unwritten rule that only senior medical students (and by this I mean 5th years and, depending on the block, 4th years) were allowed to wear their stethoscopes round their necks. It was partly a status thing for the student – it’s rubbish to be nearly a doctor and have passed your finals and still be in the same general category as the kids who are still going ‘what’s a femur?’ (as I overheard on a bus recently) – and partly for ease of recognition by other members of staff. This seems to have fallen by the wayside, and I often see second year students (not usually first year because they are still totally in love with their white coats and have not yet realised how inconvenient they are) with steths round necks.

Every time this happens I have to resist the almost overpowering urge to grab the offending steth, thrust it into the offending second-year’s hand and say ‘not for you, sunshine’. Of course I never do, I just rant about it on blogs like this instead.

There is nothing happening on my ward this afternoon, which is nice, but as I am not paid to be there hanging around and as my lovely F2 has dismissed me, I am going to bury myself in the library for a bit.

MTAS – Medicine Torture Application Scam

The more I hear about the MTAS malarkey, the worse it all gets…

So far, the Panicking Junior Doctor Grapevine (PJDG) has reported people not getting interviews at all, people getting 2 interviews on the same day 500 miles apart, and consultants refusing to attend interviews at all because the whole thing is such a sham.

The most disturbing PJDG rumour is that if you are unsuccessful in your application the first time round, you can locum for a year, but if you are unsuccessful the second time, that’s it. You can’t apply for your chosen specialty any more. 2 strikes and you’re out, on the next train to dermatology/urogynaecology/GUM. It’s like saying, well done for training to be a geography teacher, unfortunately you must now teach maths.

I think this picture sums it up nicely.

ALL/AML/CML/CLL/HD/NHD……….OMG!!

Started a new block today, in paediatric haematology and oncology (colloquially known as paeds haem/onc). You’d think it would be really sad, all these kids with leukaemia and no hair…but actually, I didn’t see a properly sick kid all day. The prognosis for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), the most common cancer in childhood, is actually really good – over 90% of kids will achieve permanent remission.

Saw a few kids with other tumours – one had Hodgekin’s disease (yes, what Delta Goodrem had!) and one had a Wilm’s tumour (kidney thing) – but most had leukaemia.

I’m the only person on this block, which is a bit scary, and rather lonely…it also means I don’t know how much I’m supposed to know – nothing to compare knowledge with. Also means I spend a lot of time sitting in clinics on my own waiting for stuff which could get a little tedious!

Today I left the hospital at 6pm which was a bit later than I would have liked…I don’t have a timetable yet but hope I’ll get the occasional afternoon off!

Apologies for the spraffy post, I am shattered, so I’m going to shut up now!

What if I took the risk, would I be dismissed?

Went to watch my rock star brother play in Edinburgh last night – it was AWESOME!!!

For those who haven’t been exposed to my ravings, he is the bassist in a great band called The Mars Patrol (no, they didn’t copy, they had the name before snow patrol did!) – plug coming up – check out their official site (see my links) or their myspace to hear some tunes…www.myspace.com/themarspatrol.

I haven’t seen them play for a while, and now the band has a permanent drummer (the last few were fruitcakes!), so this was the first time I heard them as a four-piece for a while, and, all bias aside, I was really impressed! Not to mention a wee bit proud

It’s a bit surreal being in a packed-out venue with a load of strangers screaming your little brother’s name though…

Today I went to the hospital in which I am hoping to work next year. [Never end a sentence in a preposition!] I got an unofficial guided tour with a good friend of mine who is a med student there and therefore knows his way around! I was really impressed, it’s all really well laid out and nicely new and shiney – the wards system has the potential to be a tad confusing, but no more so than the hospital I currently spend most of my time in! I also ran into a friend from my med school who came here (Edinburgh) to work, and she had her FY1 with her who is doing the job I am hoping to do – it was really useful to grill her about various aspects of the job. She seems to like it, all in all, which is always good!

Am now back at home in my parents’ house listening to the new Mars Patrol single, ‘Hit the Lights’ – GET IT, IT’S AMAZING!!!

Plug, anyone?!