SOCIAL MEDIA

A Week In The Life of a Medical Student

Saturday 17 February 2018
Hi guys! I have to confess, I'm such a nosy person and I absolutely love hearing what other people get up to in their everyday life, so I love reading these types of posts! I've been planning on writing my own version for quite a while now and I finally found the time, so I'd love to hear what you think! This is what a week in my life as a 5th year medical student in Australia looked like!

Monday:
My 21st Birthday! I'm currently on my GP rotation, so I spend time with several different doctors across a couple of different practices during the week. I only had a half day of placement today, starting at 9 and finishing at 12 (It was much more like 12.45 by the time I left though!). I had a pretty successful morning, and was super proud when I interviewed a patient by myself and came up with exactly the same differentials and investigations that the doctor did after he'd spoken to the patient!

After I finished my morning at the GP, I popped into a thrift shop that is really close to the GP practice for a little while, and I found some super cute things! Finishing placement and then visiting the thrift shop has kinda been my Monday routine for the last couple of weeks. After that I went for a birthday lunch at the new aquarium with a friend, then went home and had presents with my family who came to visit. We all went out for dinner on the esplanade, and you can find photos from that in this post if you'd like!

Tuesday:
I had a full day of placement today. The morning went pretty slowly, as the doctor I'm with takes walk-ins rather than bookings and we had no patients for the first hour! I was struggling so hard to stay awake!
The afternoon was a lot better, as I swapped to a different GP practice that at least had some patients booked in! I felt like I needed some re-energising so I had a bath with a Lush bath bomb in the evening.

Wednesday:
Another full day of placement! I had a really interesting morning seeing lots of refugee patients and seeing a few on my own. Halfway through the morning, the receptionist came in and started whispering with the doctor for a minute, and I got a bit suspicious. Five minutes later they called me into the tea room and surprised me by singing a belated happy birthday with cake and a card! It was so cute and unexpected!

The afternoon turned out to be a momentous one as I did my first ever sutures! Not gonna lie, I was pretty shaky at the start but that went away soon enough and I managed two pretty decent ones. I also got to do some cryotherapy, blasting some skin lesions with the liquid nitrogen gun which was pretty fun!

It was my turn to cook dinner that night, so I made a beef stirfry and then some mini apple crumbles for afterwards. They went down very well and we had a nice relaxed night watching How I Met Your Mother together.
Thursday:
I only had placement during the morning today. I arrived at 8.30 all ready to go and was then told that my doctor was on a conference call until 9! Although it was a bit frustrating that no-one had thought to tell me (seriously this is the life of a med student, it happens so often!), in the end I got to chill in the waiting room and read a book for half an hour, so it wasn't too bad. Once I actually got in with the doctor the rest of the morning was super interesting, with two patients presenting with GI bleeding and two with chest pain (both of which are potentially pretty serious)- and they all just came to the GP! I got to take histories from both of the chest pain patients as we were so busy, which was pretty useful for me.

We had a tutorial in the afternoon and learnt about hypertension, headaches, and how to shorten a neurological examination so that it's suitable for a GP setting. Afterwards I  went for a quick shopping trip and walk with my housemate, which was really nice to get some headspace after a busy day!

Friday:
Woohoo, today I had almost the whole day off! I had a really nice sleep in, read a book for a while and then went to a 9.30 gym class. It felt sooo luxurious! After I got back I did a lot of general organising of my life, doing some cleaning and washing and sorting out my to-do lists. I had a Tute in the afternoon, but it finished about half an hour early which was super nice! During the evening I made myself some salmon and roast veges for dinner, watched Beauty and the Beast and finished off some notes. It was a pretty relaxing way to end the week, and having Friday for organising means I get to make the most of my weekend as I've already ticked a few things off the list. How lovely!

So, that's how my week went! How was yours? What do you get up to on a typical day? I'd seriously love to know!
Kate x

6 comments :

  1. Omg i love these kind of posts!! I'm so engrossed, also can i steal your wardrobe? So much outfit envy rn!that's so sweet what they did for your birthday too! Happy belated 21st!! I hope this year is a fabulous one! <3

    Love, Anne // www.basifpa-and-did.co.uk

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    1. Thanks for your lovely comment Anne! It's so nice to hear that you enjoyed it! Haha if you ever come to visit Aussie you can totally steal my wardrobe! xx

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  2. I love how real you are in this post! I think too often people don't talk about what actually goes on at work or school, mostly because they think other people will find it boring but yours is actually so interesting. So many different things you get to do, I'm surprised you aren't drained, haha.

    Kyia Belle // http://kyia-belle.blogspot.ca

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    1. Thanks so much for saying that Kyia! It means a lot! And I am drained like 95% of the time haha, there's lots of coffee involved in this whole studying Med thing! x

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  3. I too am rather nosey so love reading about other peoples weeks, it sounds like you had a really varied week and got to learn loads. I went to a GP appointment the other day and there was a med student sat quietly in the corner soaking all the information in. I'm a medical photographer so always wander what everyone else gets up too lol!

    Michelle x
    www.wanderingcuriosities.com

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    1. Thanks so much for your comment Michelle! It's so lovely to hear that you had a Med student there- so often we get asked to leave when all we want to do is learn, haha! Being a medical photographer must be so interesting, I'd love to hear what you get up to! Maybe you should do a week in the life as well, haha! x

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