We entered a second lockdown on Thursday, with COVID deaths having returned to the level it was at back in May 😳. Being on placement during this pandemic has been somewhat of a strange experience for me, how have you guys found being on the wards? For those of you not on placement yet, how's COVID affected your medical eduction?
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It’s been crazy to see how fast the cases are rising and seeing the wards close one by one 😳😳 there are less and less patients for us to see and take histories from and as the wards are closing all medical students are congregating on the same wards 🤧I think the doctors will soon get wary of us and it’ll be harder to sign things off. But I do feel like everyone is trying their best despite the circumstances
totally agree, you can see tensions slowly rise as more and more wards are changing, its a sticky time but they are trying!
It’s such a strange time to be a medical student
So my ward in the space of this weekend has turned into a COVID Ward, so that has been a massive learning curve!!! There is obviously a limit for what we as med students can do, but at the same time- its huge privilege to work alongside the front-line Staff and just seeing how they are managing with the pandemic etc
It's definitely been concerning watching the number of patients in hospital needing treatment for COVID rise - it puts a lot in perspective and shows how critical this next month will be for the NHS.
The staff are so so nice but the current situation means they're extremely busy and don't have the time they usually would to dedicate to students. It's completely understandable but obviously it means getting sign offs is difficult atm. Most of the wards I'm on have been fully COVID for a while now - a lot of the patients are very frail and on oxygen so it is challenging trying to find someone to take a history from or examine. That being said we do have the chance to learn and experience things that 3rd years before us haven't such as PPE protocol, seeing how staff deal with outbreaks on the wards and how they've adapted to this new way of operating :)
I agree, we are definitely experiencing things that prev medical students haven’t had the opportunity to experience! It’s quite cool in that sense lol
I’m still in my preclinical years so since the start of second year, all our lectures have become online and parts of anatomy and CSLC has also become online. We still have some f2f teaching sessions and in these we are required us to wear PPE such as gloves, lab coats, surgical masks, lab goggles and of course we would have to social distance. I actually find some aspects of the course more useful for my learning such as the zoom anatomy sessions which I find to be more effective than spending 2 hours in the dissecting room. In terms of the second lockdown it doesn’t seem too different from the first, in fact we will be starting clinical examinations soon which means even more in person sessions! 😶
How do you do physpharm?
Do you think that less group work means learning is less effective?
I would actually argue that there’s still about the same amount of group work as before as although not face to face, we still meet in groups on zoom for sessions such as PBL, anatomy, CSLC. There is however a small decrease such as in physpharm where we have to work individually, however every student is still within a close enough proximity that you don’t feel completely alone and you can still ask each other for help!
I'm actually really excited to be on the wards during the second lockdown, not just from a clinical learning standpoint, but mostly just because I feel like I'm finally useful. Last lockdown I hated having to stay at home while other people were on the front lines, but now I feel like we can help out the doctors (by doing clinical tasks like tasking bloods) as well as the patients. There aren't any visitors allowed now so I hope we as medical students can be the people patients can have a chat with, express their worries to and hopefully make a positive impact on their stay in hospital.
Physpharm is f2f, we have a manual to pretend beforehand and they’re also available for us to look through on iPads during the sessions. The sessions are a lot shorter with only 45minutes available but as we now work individually I find that we end up going through the practicals a lot quicker and I don’t mind it!
I would hate to do physpharm alone so it’s good that you can still support each other
Honestly, I know this is terrible to say, but in a way I feel a little desensitised to the problem because everyday in hospital I hear things like 'oh bed 5 needs covid swab' or 'so-and-so if off isolating' and I don't even bat an eye at it anymore. Its become very "standard-practice", I can't even imagine being in a hospital in which people aren't wearing masks!!
I'm on a surgical ward so we don't have many covid patients, if anyone is positive they are isolated immediately, but very regular testing in hospital helps prevent things getting out of hand too quickly.
Nonetheless, I am slowly seeing more and more elective surgeries being delayed which is clearly a difficult decision for doctors to make because of course they just want to resolve a patient's pain ASAP, but given the circumstances, there are a lot of hoops to jump through first ://
In terms of education, as many other students are saying, it can be hard for everyone on ward to get learning opportunities, especially with things like clinics becoming less accessible for us. This added stress is also tougher on staff, however, I am fortunate to have had excellent teaching and opportunities with patients on ward so far, so I greatly appreciate the efforts all the doctors are making to not compromise out learning!
There has been a massive push towards remote teaching and learning from both uni and within hospital which has been incredibly impressive. More than anything I think the solidarity we've seen just amongst students is astounding, older years offer teaching literally all the time and I've seen so many med schools open their teachings to all unis. It makes me feel better knowing that regardless of what happens we're all here to support one another and get through this best we can :,)