Prescribing

Passing the last exam.

/ Sebastian Owczarek

I’ve done it. Today I found out I passed the last exam of medical school and I’m happy. Sure, it doesn’t compare to sitting medical finals at the end of 4th year but, still, it was a national exam that fifth years across the country were required to sit and pass. With this good result it means, once I qualify in July and start my job in August, I can officially prescribe drugs and treatments. I can be useful on the wards and a real asset to my team.

These past few weeks since the start of 2017 have been fairly busy for a 5th year. Not only did we have the Prescribing Safety Assessment exam to prepare for, we also had our mid-term portfolio review. Just because we have no exams to sit this year it doesn’t mean we’re free from formal assessment! In many ways, we’re assessed more and across a range of different domains.

We were asked to choose 3 cases and 2 clinical incidents that we were most proud of in our portfolio. In a 30-minute interview our assessors would choose one of each for us to present. It gave us an opportunity to showcase our work and talk through the processes we thought of when completing the case/incident report. It was a nerve-wracking time.

And in between all of this, we had our third of 5 clinical placements to attend and this brought with it a new set of portfolio documents to complete. On Friday I finished my 7-week attachment on the Acute Medical Unit at Furness General Hospital. It was the last time I’ll be placed in Barrow-in-Furness. Saying goodbye to the sight of the hospital as I drove away would be another memorable moment for me as I transition from a 5th year medical student to a Foundation Year 1 doctor.

As a year group, we have only a few weeks to wait until we find out which region of the country we’ll be working in come August. Hopefully it’ll be good news for all. In the meantime though, I’ll be counting down the days and waiting in anticipation for an update on what my future holds.

Abbey Barraclough

/ Rebekah Fleming

To prescribe, or not to prescribe? That is the question!

So in the middle of our second term of fifth year, we had our final formal exam – the PSA or Prescribing Safety Assessment. It is a national assessment of all final year medical students and dictates whether you can prescribe as a junior doctor. It is a fairly new thing and has only been around a few years, honestly a lot of us moaned and groaned about having to do it. However, on hindsight, it wasn’t all that bad and actually none of us should complain at having them make sure that the patients we will soon be writing out drug prescriptions for are safe. You’re given a BNF (British National Formulary), which is the bible of all things pharmacological, both online and on paper which is a real help. They do everything they can to help you, and it didn’t feel like one of those tests set out to trip you up. It is just a test of the common drugs you see in the various specialities, common interactions, side effects and the different ways you need to monitor them. Obviously there were some harder questions in there but you expect that. My top tips for all of the subsequent years would be, just as Tom Fisher the pharmacist advised, just familiarise yourself with the layout and the style of the questions with the PSA practice papers online. And not to stress out too much, I think it’s easy to underestimate the amount that you pick up naturally about prescribing and drug safety just by being on the wards.

The PSA came at the end of a week called Leadership and Management. This was completely different to any other week you have in fifth year and although full days of lectures can be a struggle – there were some real gems we all gained from it. It started with a simulation day. None of us really knew what we were in for until we got there and then it all became clear… The plan was to stress us all out! Not in a sadistic way I should add but to show you how easy it is to make mistakes when put under pressure, either by the environment or the team you’re working in. It was a real eye opener and an excellent learning point before we all enter the working world. There were then lectures all based around preparing us for life after medical school: pay, banding, qualities of a good doctor, teamwork, handling complaints and making mistakes. The talk on making mistakes and what to do when we inevitably as humans do make them was one of the take home talks. Doctors came in and honestly spoke about their mistakes and how the handled them, the good and the bad. It was an excellent way to remind us that even though mistakes will happen, how we approach them as a professional can make a huge impact on the outcome.

Finally, jobs came out and we all have one! So massive congratulations to all of the fifth year Lancaster Medics – celebrations are definitely in order! I am sure there will be lots of that, we have so much to look forward to, grad ball and graduation, in our final term back in Lancs. Almost at the end now!