Finals

Abbey Barraclough

/ Rebekah Fleming

F1 Bootcamp

We have had our first month on placement as fifth years. Hectic is an understatement! But I am so glad that our course is the way it is. With finals all done and finished last year, it feels like placement now is all about focusing on becoming junior doctors and the job that we will be expected to do fairly soon. I’m on a surgical ward placement at the moment, working the hours of the F1 through the week and trying my best to keep up with what’s happening. You get to do loads of clinical skills and it’s great because you are taking the bloods and doing the cannulas but not just as a routine exercise. You’re involved in all of the aspects of the care the patients get, so I feel like I’m getting a better understanding of why things are being done and learning to interpret the results we get from them because I know the clinical history. It’s hard, but when you have a good day it’s brilliant! Plus, what better way to be a good junior doctor than to have seen first-hand the good, the bad and the ugly of the job.

On that note FPAS opened yesterday, that’s the application form for our foundation years. The form itself is relatively straightforward. Ranking the deaneries (fancy word for an area you apply to) is not. You have to list, from your first preference to last, all of the deaneries in the UK and even though you hope you won’t end up with your last choices, you still find yourself umming and arring because ‘what if?!’ We have two weeks to make up our minds and get the forms in, then it’s a waiting game. It seems like a huge thing to be applying to be a doctor but it is so exciting to think that soon we will be graduating and stepping out into the real world. If the rest of this year is anything like the last month has been, Lancaster is prepping us for it very well!

Abbey Barraclough

/ Hannah Crawford Leighton

Our Last Ever First Day

I’m not going to lie, I’m brand new to blogging and very inexperienced in anything vaguely technological, but when the opportunity arose for one of us oldies to share our experiences of 5th year with you it sounded like an ideal way to record our last year and hopefully, if at all I can, help some of you along the way.

We’ve had our last ever first day today. Four summers ago, when I sat there as a fresher, to be where we are today seemed like a lifetime away. Saying ‘fifth year medical student’ seems almost surreal; I’m not overly sure how that’s happened. It’s a terrible cliché but the time has literally flown by. And sitting there and realising that this was our last first day, this was our last start of a year in Lancaster, this was our last induction as medical students was terrifying. One minute you’re starting out in medical school, the next you’re doing finals and then all of a sudden its SJT’s, deaneries, FY1 applications and the prospect of your future life as a doctor. It’s exciting too though. The dream is almost a reality. Even if that dream has lost some of the rose tinting you had at the start and is a more realistic version of that same dream, it’s a dream nonetheless. You work so hard to get into medical school, and then harder still when you get here and it finally feels like the end is in sight. Although, of course, our enthusiasm for ‘life-long learning’ will never cease – I would love a show of hands of people who put that in their personal statements!

We are very well supported here at Lancaster, it’s one of the many perks of a small medical school and that is making the whole prospect of applications less daunting. The staff get to know you, you know where you can go for help and you know that you will be able to get that help if you ask for it. We get to know the clinical and educational staff throughout the years and being able to pick a referee who actually knows you, and well, is something we shouldn’t take for granted. Many of the larger medical schools really struggle when it comes to that bit of the form, or so we hear.
We were also introduced to the portfolio today; the fifth year equivalent of the log book. It is huge! All the things we need to be deemed competent as a junior doctor are there ready for us to get signed throughout the year, along with clinical cases, case based discussions and continual reflection to see how we’re improving. So not too much changes between the years. And it’s good practice for the rest of our careers. Starting out with all the enthusiasm of a new year, I’m very much hoping to keep on top of everything and be meticulously organised. But for someone who organisation doesn’t come all too naturally, I might have to keep you posted on that one!

I don’t want to get too emotional thinking about it being our last this and our last that. I love Lancaster and have had, am having, the best time at medical school here. Now all I have to do is fill in those blank pages of the portfolio and (fingers crossed) manage to get a job somewhere. If only it was that simple! Wish us all luck!