End of Firm I

It was my last day of my first firm (General Medicine - Respiratory) today, and although we didn't need to (we were signed off the day before), we three conscientious medical students attached to the firm went for the consultant ward round. What we expected was a nice little round-up of all the patients that we've been seeing day in day out on the wards. However, because there were 2 new specialist registrars and a whole load of patients from the firm's on call period the day before, what transpired was a whirlwind of activity, hurling from one patient to another, leaving two very frazzled house officers and three utterly clueless medical students behind. In the end, the consultant took pity on us (and thankfully dumped us) by asking us to go and do some pointless clerking (pointless because we weren't going to present them to anyone anyway). Furthermore, in the afternoon (when we still came back, like virulent bacterial strains which won't go away), two patients acutely took a turn of the worse, giving even more work to the HOs, so we were let off early. So much for a good last day.

Of course, the last day didn't reflect the whole posting quite so well. It's definitely a busy firm, with lots of jobs for all the doctors, but somehow they had the time to organise us - give us jobs and swoop in to save us when we didn't succeed (ie. when our syringes drew up nothing), listen to our hesitant presentations of patients, and explain findings and plans to us. Even though we were more hindrances than helps on the firm.

So, in summary:
- pretty good outline of respiratory medicine
- 2 on-calls
- 1 lumbar puncture seen
- loads of chest x-ray and CT scans seen (and maybe not understood)
- venepunctures - 7-8 successful, 2-3 unsuccessful
- ABGs - 2 out of 2!
- 3 bronchoscopies seen - 1 hard, 2 easy
- 2 new friends made!
- misc.

Next - surgery! Starting with vascular surgery. I'm already looking forward to scrubbing in for the first time, even if it's just to observe surgeries (which is about all we'll do anyway)!