Elective

I forgot to mention elective! Best thing about the year and I forgot to mention it.

Most medical schools have an "elective" in which students spend a few weeks in some health care setting, often in a third world hospital. To quote UWA med school (who say it better than UQ):

The elective placement offers students an opportunity to undertake supervised experience in clinical or community work anywhere in the world. It may be seen as an opportunity to prepare for a particular career direction or to explore different experiences or to enhance skills in particular areas. The placement is intended to provide practical experiences, awareness of professional practice, ability to function effectively as an individual and as a member of a team, and an understanding of professional responsibilities.

Most universities have their elective in the final year, UQ is unique in Australia, and as far as I know the world, in having a first year elective. UQ have a fourth year elective as well but it is one of the "rotations" (rather than at the end like the first one or those in most other med schools) and so it is not possible to give lots of notice to potential host institutions which severely restricts one's options.

I have arranged to spend the month with the Queensland Ambulance Service. I have been attached to a particular ambulance crew and will be going where they go for the next four weeks.

Strange day

Today has been a strange day.

I have not felt a desperate need to read a textbook. I have not needed to review notes. I have not needed to do old exam papers. I have not needed to run though my flash cards. There is no terrible sense of dread at what might happen if I don't do one of those things or all of them at once.

I think I like the day after finals.

Exam anxiety

One of the benefits of the student generated questions concept was supposed to be that it would reduce student stress levels. For a third of the students (I think it was surnames starting A-H) some clever person came up with a strategy which had somewhat the opposite effect: they handed out the second year paper instead of ours. The error was not discovered until well into reading time.

Done!

The final exam is (finally) over!

A couple of gripes:

• Too much population health. OK, any population health is too much; way too much population health.
• I am getting very sick of long complicated clinical stories which have absolutely nothing to do with the question being asked

But I think I passed so I just don't care!

First semester flashcards

You are not supposed to "learn and dump" in medicine (though if any of us remember by graduation day any of the population health crud we crammed this week I will be very surprised). Everything we learned in semester one is examinable in the exam on Wednesday and that together with everything we learned this semester will be examinable at the end of second year.

So... I have been going through my flashcards from first semester. Three observations...

1. Some of them now seem pathetically basic
2. Some of them cover material I now have not the foggiest clue about
3. A depressingly large number fall into both of those categories

Swot-vac in med school

What does swat-vac feel like in med school? Opinions from three of my fellow students:

1. Anyone else feeling like the gerbil running in the wheel??
2. I feel more like a gerbil in the dryer...
3. I've rolled out the wheel and am just lying in the straw on the bottom of my cage...

Back to work...

Lasts

This year has gone so fast! It seems like only yesterday we were having our first lecture, first PBL etc and now we are having "lasts". Today was our last PBL tutorial for the year.

Union wants tougher penalties for paramedic assault

From ABC News:

The ambulance union says new laws are needed to stop people from assaulting paramedics, after one was bashed outside the Cairns Base Hospital in far north Queensland.

It says a frustrated patient kicked a paramedic in the back and head after spending two-and-half hours in the back of an ambulance outside the emergency department.

[the union] says the assault of a paramedic should be treated like an assault on a police officer and carry a heavier penalty.

This is one of those stories which is wrong in so many ways you don't know where to start. It points to at least three major systemic faults in the government of Queensland.

1. The union is wrong. You should not need to be someone "special" for the law to protect you from assault. Assaulting a copper should be the same as assaulting an ambo should be the same as assaulting you or me. And it should be bad, very bad. And before anyone asks, no I am not advocating mandatory (aka mindless) sentencing. I am asking for routine serious sentencing for common assault. Shouldn't be a big ask.
2. Bed block (people stuck in the emergency department because the hospital is full) and ramping (people stuck in ambulances because the ED is full) have got to be fixed. They are the insane result of the way efficiency is measured in hospitals. Hospital administrators actually get rewarded when their hospitals are full to the rafters; it is interpreted as "efficient use of resources".
3. Finally, what was someone who was fit enough to kick a paramedic in the head doing in an ambulance in the first place? People who are triage category 1 or 2 should not be sitting on the ramp (even if the ED is full) and people who are not triage category 1 or 2 should be waiting in chairs, not in an ambulance.

Off my high-horse and back to work...