My week

I was tempted to do a day by day diary of my week, but eventually decided against it. Instead I'm going to summarise my week.

This Chart show the relative importance of three things in making a diagnosis. These are taking a history, examination and tests.
The original work can be found here. I have wanted to put this in for a while now but could not find a reason to. I have put it here because it is a reasonably indicator of what I've done this week.

Most of my time is spent chatting to patients on the wards and taking histories. If an F1/F2 is around and feeling nice they often get us to take a history and practice presenting to them. In clinics we often present to the consultant before he see's the patient. Most of the years above have told me that the main thing to get out of this attachment is to simply get good at taking histories and presenting back to people. After all this is the major thing in finding out whats wrong. Expensive tests usually confirm what we often know from the history.

A smaller amount of time is spent examining patients or looking/trying to interpret there test results.

Other time is spent in teaching, such as seminars and lectures. This week we have discussed colorectal cancer, practicing PRs, other sessions included going over the abdominal examination and discussing why we palpated for various bits and bobs.

This week was very similar to last week, thankfully it seemed a little easier and although I still feel completely out of my depth and very stupid I do sometimes get the feeling that a little bit more is slotting into place.

Weeked Homework- Pathology and Radiology teaching, immunology lecture to listen to, reivse anatomy of femoral/inguinal hernia's and make notes of cycstic fibrosis. Also to gut room and do some laundry