First day on the ward

Our second week in hospital was the first time we were sent to the wards to speak to real patients. It was scary because there was nobody with us, and we had to approach nursing staff and the patients ourselves to ask to speak to them. You feel bad bothering them, but most patients are actually happy to have someone to speak to, and the nurses give advice on who might be better to speak to as well which was really helpful. It’s difficult to write notes the same way as we practiced in the OSCE because you can’t control what order patients tell you information. There tends to be a lot of stories that, even though they can be interesting, they aren’t what you need to write in your history. It can be hard to steer patients towards what you need to find out, but I’m hoping that will come with practice.