UKCAT Results

Hello all,
So on the 18th of September, I sat my UKCAT at 2pm. I've been revising on and off for about a month, and in the last ten days I went into intense revision mode. I used both the 600Questions book which costs £10 and a 2-week subscription of Medify costing me £35. All in all, I'd highly recommend Medify to definitely boost your timing and it helped me considerably. My only regret was I'd left my preparation for Descision Analysis a little late, leaving around two days before my exam. In 2012 I scored 680 in DA, assuming they probably didn't change the marking around too much, oh how I was wrong!

My scores below:
Verbal Reasoning - 620
Quantitative Reasoning - 780
Abstract Reasoning - 750
Decision Analysis - 540
Situational Judgement - Band 2

Giving an average of 673. My heart sinked a little when I looked at DA, surprised considering I thought I did quite well in that section, more so than QR! It means I'll probably be taking a small step away from applying to four A101 GEM courses on UCAS, and consider 2 or 3 five-year A100 courses. I personally don't think my UKCAT is high enough to get interviews onto the four-year courses, and I really want to maximize my chances of interview. Funding might be an issue, but I've been saving up for a few years so it shouldn't be too bad..

Thoughts?

My Internship

Hi all!

It's been such a busy week! On Monday, it was the first day of my paid six week long internship at the university hospital and since then there's been no rest whatsoever. I'm at the hospital for my placement for five days a week, Mondays to Fridays for 8 hours, so that's either a 9am-5pm or an 8am-4pm shift. On top of Monday's, I'm also volunteering within the same grounds on the gastrointestinal ward from 5pm-7pm. On the weekends, I've also got two 4 hour shifts on my part-time job and two hours volunteering at the children's hospital. So I'm midway through a 50-hour week and so far - I think I'm doing alright. My only concern is preparing for my UKCAT and personal statement alongside all of this.

Today was my third day into my internship and I'm beginning to really enjoy it! I'm working alongside two really lovely medical students who'll be entering their fourth year this September and they've both been incredibly helpful settling me in. My internship over the six weeks is primarily administrative, focusing on data entry of patient records which are collated into one large database which is being used for auditing as well as for their research projects over the summer. Over the past few days it's been fascinating to get to know what sort of research they're carrying out with this data and I've understood that the role that I'm currently doing was something one of the medical students was doing over the last summer, except this year she's manipulating and making use of both my data and her data, so she happily showed me the ropes and helped me understand the medical background behind my data and getting familiar with all the terms. 

The consultant overseeing my work is an Upper GI surgeon and so that's essentially the clinical nature of the data I'm working on. Its patients who've primary suffered from adenocarcinomas in their gastrointestinal and oesophogeal tracts and so the subsequent treatments they've had to treat it are gastroenectomies and oesophegectomies. Its these surgical procedures and the histopathology data related to it that I've had to handle and it's been a steep learning curve to handle. Prior to this, I hadn't really appreciated or grasped what a surgical resection entailed, and if I had, I probably didn't give it much thought. 

I didn't really know the anatomy of the stomach, but now I'm confident I could label the cardia, fundus, phylorus, duodenum, body, the lesser and greater curves, and the distal and proximal margins  - all of which are features of this incredible organ. I definitely hadn't heard of the TNM classification for tumours, let alone how to convert one staging from the old UICC 6 framework to the newly introduced UICC 7 method, but now I do! I still have quite a lot to learn when it comes to this pathology data, such as getting familiar with Lauren types (such as intestinal, diffuse or mixed..) and the Macroscopic appearance of tumours (such as ulcerated, polyploid, ill-defined..), on top of R0, R1a, R1b, and R2 resections. It's one thing to simply copy across these terms, because let's be fair - that's the minimum that's expected of me, but with an amazing opportunity like this where I can grasp and flavour clinical knowledge, it would be a shame not to identify and understand what I could potentially be looking out for in the future. 

What struck me the most was when the medical student who'd done this last year - told me she had to do all of this completely on her own - self taught. Her medical school knowledge briefly glanced over TNM staging, and in the majority of cases she had to go away and research how to apply and assign these terms, which was impressive! Can you tell I've been picking her brain a little with all my questions? She's been so incredibly helpful and I am eternally grateful!

Anyway, I'll try and write again soon - but for now I'll be going to sleep and getting some rest for tomorrow! Thanks for reading. P.S. Good luck with everyone receiving their GCSE results tomorrow!

Summer Holidays

So since it's been the holidays, I've taken up a lot of overtime at work and worked double what I normally do during term-time. I work in a store on pretty much minimum wage and have been there since last year. It's been great to get a bigger chunk of finance coming in than the usual every month during the summer though! But today is a day where I've got no work, and will just do absolutely nothing and not feel guilty about it - except make a start to blog!

Technically, I have also got a second job. Recruited by my university, I'm an E-mentor to seven lovely A-Level students via the Realizing Opportunities scheme. Every week - since February of this year - I spend a couple of hours sending e-mails back and forth, offering advice and help with their university applications.. At the moment, I'm working with them on their personal statements and it's honestly been lovely reading about their enthusiasm.. I enjoy supporting them and forging long-term professional relationships with them. So much so, I love, love, love it and will definitely carry it on next year with some new fresh faces! 

During the summer I've also been keeping up with my volunteering on Saturdays. For two hours, I pop down to my local Hospital as a ward host. Every week I'm there, it's just so different; some days I can be making tea for the parents, or tidying up the play room. Last week, I was ordering the meals for the Sunday lunch/supper and later on I spent an hour colouring with a little patient's sister. Every week since January it's been a new collection of patients, of families and conditions. I also understand that because I'm working with children, it's a different dynamic as to working with older patients - which is why I'd love to secure a second placement possibly at my university hospital trust which'll offer something else! 

At the moment, really all I'm doing is try to secure that second volunteering placement.

Lots of love!