A medical education in the UK is a very specific affair. There are some facts that of course are global, fundamentals of anatomy for example, that are the same from Karachi to California. Some things you need to learn to be a doctor anywhere in the world. But here there is one element that is […]
As someone who has watched a close relative go through the experience of receiving chemotherapy, it is not something that I would ever wish upon any human being. The hypothesis for chemotherapy is simple. Cancer cells grow faster than normal somatic cells and thus if we inject poison into the body that damages cells, the […]
It’s funny how you go through life and at each new stage you look forward to telling friends/relatives/random people on the street what wonderful plans you have for the next stage of life. Well, at least that was true in my childhood. Now the question of ‘what are you going to do once you leave […]
Since I began my studies I have, perhaps unsurprisingly, become somewhat of a hypochondriac. The infamous ‘medical student syndrome’ is hard to escape when you spend every day reading about numerous conditions often with non-specific symptoms. A twinge of pain can transform into terminal cancer, a headache into meningitis. My favourite ailment so far struck […]
Read More… from Being A Patient – Should I tell my doctor that I am a medical student?
When we think of healthcare, I expect the majority of us would think of broken arms, twisted ankles, or the dreaded winter flu that threatens our physical health. Of course, this is a fair enough assumption as hospitals and GPs primarily exist to treat physical ailments that might befall us, and the primary job of […]
Murmurs, crackles, oedema, thrills, shifting dullness, liver flap, spoon nails – the list of clinical signs goes on and on, yet learning them is not as easy as memorising the terms. Now that I am in my clinical training I have finally experienced the joy of seeing these signs for the first time, and also […]
‘Right, in a few seconds you will fall into a peaceful sleep…’ Words that I heard many times in the few days that I gained work experience in anaesthetics. The question of what specialty I would like to go into is not something that I have ever considered seriously (mainly given that it is such […]
Is there a doctor on board? Before I became a medical student it was these words I imagined would one day summon me to perform some heroic life-saving act. I thought it would be me who would dash to the front of a plane, and undertake a daring procedure, never before tried outside the confines […]
Ah, that feeling of headaches, high temperature, a rapid heart-rate and disorientation. All signs telling us that it’s probably time to pop down to the doctor and grab some antibiotics to help cure us of whatever infection may have got through our immune defences. But, what if we couldn’t do this? What if upon contracting […]
Why we need to start talking about doubt in medical school. In recent weeks, in the aftermath of Jeremy Hunt’s decision to force through new contracts on junior doctors, an oft hidden subsection of medics has come to the fore, namely ‘the doubters’. Hidden behind the cries of the devoted, who would move all the […]