This small town…

A friend once said that he would never be able to live in London because it was so big and anonymous; he said he liked his small university town where you couldn’t walk from one side to the other without meeting someone you knew.

Although this is a big city, the fact remains that most students (and especially most medical students) live within a certain area between the three main hospital sites.  It is rare for me to walk home, or wander down one of the main high streets, without at least seeing someone that I acknowledge.

On this note, even though I see people I know a lot, and even though a number of my best friends live on the same walk into University… HOW COME I never bump into them, and instead have to make weird small talk with someone I went to school with and didn’t really like even then?

And also- why, oh WHY do I never bump into Cutemedicboy?!

Medicgirl x

A Day In The Life Of…

My alarm usually goes at about 8am, at which point my bleery eyes open and my arm is flug out of bed to silence it.  I go back to sleep to the sounds of my flatmates getting breakfast.

At 8.15 my second alarm goes, and once again I silence it, and go back to sleep.

There is no third alarm because my phone is rubbish.

At about 9 I wake up properly, look at the time, and curse the day my nice alarm clock with a snooze function broke.

I get up, sometimes I go for a run, and I always always have coffee (my coffee is so strong it once made a friend shake).  I then waste time until my lectures- of which there are usual one or two in a day. I wander into Uni, I sit in a lecture room and make notes, and then I come home. Occasionally I swing past a library to get extra reading books out; these books sit on my floor and I tend to return them unread.

Evenings are either taken up with random Uni-Society things I’m a member of, or more wasting of time.  There is some drunkeness on some occasions.  Otherwise, I have supper, I have a bath, I do stretches and random exercises, and I go to bed (after hot chocolate).

Can you tell that I’m LOVING my BSc?

Medicgirl x

Soapbox… part 2

Firstly- thanks to everyone that commented; It’s nice when people get all responsive.  Having read them- I do understand where a number of you are coming from.  Here are my continued musings on the topic….

In a conversation over lunch at the weekend, my mother pointed out the problems that people have getting to their GP especially, like has been said, for long term illness.  My views are probably very biased in that I have been fortunate enough to have GPs where you can still book appointments in advance, and those in my acquaintance who have to see their GP regularly are lucky enough to work for companies that allow them the time off…

We’re getting into territory about which I know very little, but lets go there anyway- Why should the NHS take the economic fall for other businesses? When I mentioned before about long term illness, I didn’t actually mean using holiday time- I meant using sick time, which is different. I appreciate this would be very hard for small businesses and people who are self-employed, but surely it should be mandate that people are allowed time off work for health problems, no matter what those problems are. Is it not already?

As I said, I’ve been very lucky- at my GP practice you can ring up on the day, and you can book in advance. They even have evening appointments.  Which makes me wonder why this is not possible everywhere…

I really feel that the general public should in some ways feel at least slightly accountable when it comes to using the national health, which was really the fire behind the last entry I posted.   Perhaps there should be some sort of education in how to use the NHS; I’m guessing anyone posting here is unlikely to be the kind of person who rings an ambulance because they have a headache, and no, they haven’t tried taking paracetamol to make it better…
That sort of this happens all the time and although I couldn’t actually find how much that is costing the taxpayer, it’s pretty depressing. 

It’s not that I don’t think General Practice provision could get better, or be better organised, or that it shouldn’t change…. I do however think that there would be better ways of achieving this than the general bitching that seems to go on in the press on how rubbish the hours of service are- because it’s about more than that. 

Thoughts?

Medicgirl xxx

London Medicgirl gets on her soapbox.

I happened to pick up a copy of The Metro at the weekend; it had been left on the seat presumably sometime on friday, and I noticed the front page; some list of what the two prominant political parties in this country want to do with the NHS.

My eye was drawn to the list on the left (Labour).

Something about more out of hours GP service, and more choice…Yadayadayada; we’ve all heard it all before. 

I grew up in a family that very much went with lets-see-how-you-feel-in-the-morning… Sure, if a temperature wasn’t coming down, or a throat was becoming progressively more supurative then off we were packed to our GP. As a result- on the very few times when my mother rang up and said “She really needs to see someone” (eg. when I had glandular fever), they were more than happy to slot us into a morning by getting me to see the nurse, and then the GP popping through between patients to sign off the script.

Anyway, I digress. I have a feeling the rest of the world (and I guess we do live in a instant gratification society) don’t really understand the concept of General Practice and illness.

• If you are ill- needing medication and the like- go to your doctor… the fact that you are having to take time off work to do so shouldn’t be that much of an issue remember- because you’re ILL.
• If it is out of hours, you have a choice- are you SO ILL you cannot wait until the morning? In which case, you need to go to A+E because otherwise you might die.
• If it is some routine thing that you need to get done? I don’t know, like injections for your fun little holiday coming up? Well, you’re going on holiday so one can only presume you can afford to take a morning off.  And if its a routine appointment for a long term illness? Well, again- this is presumably what sick days are for.

The one place that I can see that would actually benefit from decent out of hours GP service is in the countryside, where the GP is going to get to the patient faster than an ambulance in many cases; my mother would not be here to day were it not for our local GP schlepping out to give a very necessary injection of adrenaline one summer evening.

I know this topic has been covered by many others (far more eloquently, and with greater knowledge of what is actually needed) but this really irritates me.  I appreciate things probably only work if you have a decent local GP service, but I’m starting to think that that often depends, at least in part, on the people using it…

I’ll get off my soapbox now.

Medicgirl xxx

Freshers week for the non-fresher.

So, freshers week for me started on the Tuesday- with our Medical Fresher’s Fayre.

Armed with edible goodies we set about trying to entice new meat into the society, and convince them that they really did want to join up!  I actually like the fayre, because despite the fact it is usually held in the most sweaty and humid room of the hospital, it’s a chance to scope out the freshers, and catch up with old friends.

This year we did however forego the three legged pub crawl, and merely retreated to our favourite local pub for drinks while the freshers staggered around the neighbourhood tied to each other and getting progressively more inebriated.

The next morning my course started- needless to say I was a little jaded, but dragged myself in for the customary introductory lectures.

Saturday was a comedy show in the medical student bar- One of my friends was in it, so I was there as moral support (about 1 of 10 non-freshers in a sea of first years!).  Still, for what it lacked at moments in comedy value, it made up for it in spirit and I had a good time- joining them afterwards for drinking that went on long into the night.

Sunday night I rounded up the week with flatmate and old friend, over a pint and a game of cards, in the pub we actually started in on Tuesday.  Alas, despite having had only two days of lectures by this point, I was already behind on the reading…

Medicgirl x