Hi! I’m Luke, a fourth-year medic and MSC Secretary for this year. Being a medical student is at the best of times tough and nowadays with COVID it is no different.
Luckily for medical students, medicine doesn’t stop and our time on placement is filled with a new sense of importance and value. Without it we’d be stuck inside, apart from our beloved medic friends (still haven’t figured out why medics are so insular four years in).
Seeing colleagues in placement and talking to patients has never felt like more of a privilege and I’m sure I speak for many clinical years when I say that as much as medicine can wear you down, without it this year we’d be lost.
A day in the life of a Year 4 medical student
Where do Apple get their ringtones from? Seemingly it’s a maelstrom of the most blood chilling sounds known to man. Regardless it’s with this that my day begins at 7am. After staring at the ceiling pondering why I stayed up to 1am scrolling through Instagram, I get up and within the hour, I’m showered, dressed, fed and out the door ready for a new day of placement.
Placement during a pandemic
Placement is one of the few luxuries in COVID times for medical students, a point I lament as I receive a text from a friend in the year below (another day of zoom for him). After a brisk 45-minute walk I’ve left Newington behind and I walk into the Gen Med ward in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh which has been my safe place for the last 10 weeks.
It’s 9am and the morning ward is about to begin (only after I half awkwardly ask who wants the only non-qualified medic in the room). Luckily for me it’s one of the nice consultants on today and she takes me on a whistle stop tour of patients all the while asking me questions ranging from ECG interpretation and treatment options to what life’s like as a 22-year-old medical student (pretty boring at the minute to be honest).
On the wards
Ward round survived (I got a question right today go me), it’s on to morning jobs and lucky me, it’s a day of venepuncture and cannula’s (cannulae?). After poking patients for a couple hours with more success than you might think, its lunch time. Meeting up with fellow medical students in the junior doctors’ lounge is one of the few chances to see friends these days and is often the highlight of my day. It’s a chance to share stories from placement and to lament our youth, lost to a certain bug going around (Big Cheese I shall return yet).
Back to the ward I go for 2pm, to find waiting for me an FY1 with a sinister grin on his face. There’s a patient’s relative to phone for an update and discharge letters to be written (and wouldn’t you know it, I can do both). I say yes and two hours later I’ve completed enough admin to make a HR manager collapse (all without any PebblePocket sign offs, I really am an NHS hero). Unpaid labour complete I should get back to being a medical student.
Armed with a stethoscope, PPE and an ever-present mask I approach an unsuspecting patient like a character from Close Encounters, with a singular question “Hi! So sorry to bother you but I was wondering if I could practice an examination on you, don’t worry it’s got nothing to do with your care, it’s just so I can learn”. Textbook medical student intro complete and, examination and history under my belt, I’m feeling good as I approach my poor FY’s with my phone in hand… “do you mind signing off some stuff for me?”. It’s now 6pm as I leave the infirmary (either very late for a short day or very early for a long day)
Dinner, Netflix, sleep, repeat
On return to my now freezing South Edinburgh flat, I exchange pleasantries with my two flat mates (also medics, how odd?), grab some toast and open my laptop. There’s an MSC meeting tonight and as luck would have it I’m the MSC Secretary. The meetings for this year appear to take longer than usual, maybe we have more to talk about for some reason (the UKFPO, vaccines, restrictions, leaving for Christmas, coming back after Christmas, putting on events, cancelling events, electives, exams and that was just December’s meeting). Close my laptop, eat dinner, watch some Netflix with my flatmates and set the alarm that will come back to haunt me tomorrow morning. I stare at the ceiling above my bed, all the while thinking… tomorrow I’m gonna nail that cannula.
Hopefully that summary of my average day was vaguely enjoyable to read and not too overly punctuated with my inner monologue.
P.S.
I think I’m also meant to write something about being on the MSC so here’s the footnotes (sorry Aya). So yes, I’m indeed the MSC Secretary which means my job is to facilitate the jobs of everyone else. Convenor needs somebody to go to a meeting, I’m there, sports convenor needs somebody to take the team photos, my camera’s already packed. Being part of the MSC has given me the opportunity to organise huge events like SNIMS and has also given me access to the inner workings of the medical school. This allows me to have meetings with faculty and beyond to help solve the menagerie of problems facing medical students. This year our job has gotten harder than any of us could have anticipated but as ever the MSC has risen to the challenge and we will continue to represent Edinburgh medical students’ interests to the medical school and beyond.
We move,
Luke O’Kane
MSC Secretary 2020-21
