Second week at the hospital where I am getting my first experience of being a doctor! This week was great too!

I got to see endoscopy on a few patients. Basically a procedure where you are awake but under a light anaesthetic and have a LONG flexible tube (which you can control with a hand control) put into you via your mouth or anus. The tube has a camera on the end that lets the doctor see the gut from the inside. You would be amazed at how powerful this tiny camera is!! When it was being prepped and just put on the table I looked at the monitor and I could see every little nook, cranny, scratch and blotch on the surface of the tray! Each of the endoscopes cost a whopping £30,000 O__O (about $50,000).

I was able to do an MMSE exam on a patient. THe patient I performed it on did really poorly. He got 13/30. He was extremely confused and when I left him he started to follow me around and I had to get the nurse to return him to his bed. I repeated the exam a few days later and he was MUCH improved, he got 22/30. Suggesting he had an acute onset of confusion.

Just yesterday there were very few doctors on the ward and so I was allowed to take up the job of a special house officer!! Before I tell the story, perhaps now would be a good time to tell you the ranking of doctors in the UK:

Medical student (thats me) > foundation year doctor > Special house officer > special registrar > consultant (the top dog)

Consultants garner A LOT of respect, when they walk into a room you will see everyone suddenly behave. They always have an entourage of doctors and nurses with them when they do their ward rounds too. They don't ever have to do things like form filling or writing stuff down, the SHO and SpR do that for him. Hopefully I will get to that level some day =D

OH and on with the story, I went round with the special registrar and was writing up notes for him and just being looked at as a doctor with patients, after the round was over the SpR congratulated and said I had done a great job =D

OH, I took some blood this week!!! I had a few tries before hand but I finally got some blood! =D. Quite a lot as well, 3 vials worth of blood from a very sweet lady! Taking blood can be very difficult if you do not have experience and technique. Also the patient him/herself can make taking blood hard. They can be squeemish, they may be obese or have swollen arms/legs, they may already have had blood taken from some areas and those areas may be bruised and you can't take blood from there again. etc etc. But yeah, I took some blood successfully!! =D

ALSO, this week I have begun an audit with my FY1, SHO and a fellow student. An audit is basically a tool used to look at how the hospital is running. E.g. you could use the audit to look at the number of cardiac arrests in the months of sept/oct compared to the months of sept/oct last year and the years before. It will show you if things have improved or not essentially.

Other than the above, I got up to a lot of routine things too. Doing examinations, filling out blood forms, following the consultant on ward rounds etc.

In terms of social stuff......hmm this week has been pretty tame. Nothing really special. We had movie nights etc. Oh but yesterday I went to dinner with some friends and a friend had a bag stolen. We went to the police station to report it and as we were there a few other friends who were heading home found the bag and its contents scattered across the road. The bag only had books and other studenty stuff in it so the thief wasn't interested. Lucky for us, it turned a bad night back into a good night =D.

SO! I have been working with REAL patients! I have been made to move into a small flat near a hospital (that is about 3 hours from my house) and will be working/learning there. My first week has gone by without me cocking up! I think I'll write a few blogs about my experiences. I hope you enjoy reading them! They will be interesting!

HOSPITAL STUFF:

This week, I have already seen a patient I was examining die O__O. Not while I was there, but overnight. It was quite a shock but it was such a busy day that we had to just move on quickly.

I also saw the consultant I am under sign a DNAR (Do Not Attempt Resusciation) form for a patient, which gave me the chills but I know that it is important to do.

I was able to examine a poorly patient and actually identify a problem with their heart using my stethoscope!! My consultant was really impressed! As was I!!

Saw a person get a stomach drain (had a very swollen stomach, his belly button was inside out)

Saw someone with 5-6 fistulae (these are linkages between you intestine and something it isn't supposed to link to, in this case the womans abdomen....this meant there was faeces leaking out of her belly, quite shocking)

I saw a man that was completely red and had to try and diagnose him

Saw a patient that had suffered a splenectomy (removal of spleen) even though she didn't need it! (although that happened in another hospital and not ours, still was quite saddening though

SOCIAL STUFF:

Messed about in the town centre and with other friends on the campus. Hopefully I'll do more social stuff next week as this week was all a baptism of fire and LOTS of work!

OH, as I was eating lunch with friends.........some oldish man comes and asks to sit down with us. We say yes. We ask him who he is........he was the chief executive of the entire hospital!!! We were all taken aback that such a high ranking guy would come sit with us med students but he was a really nice guy! He was newly appointed and I think he will do a great job!

Hope you guys find these interesting! I plan to do more soon!

In your opinion?

I was spurned to write this blog after seeing the very odd reviews for Castlevania LOS which caused the gaming community to go into an uproar with people either defending the game and saying that the big reviewers are misleading potential buyers or defending the professional reviewers and saying that they have a more valid opinion on such matters.

I would have to say yes to the question in the title of this blog. We see this in EVERY corner of our life. It is a shame that such influential power is often used to just line the pockets of already rich men/women instead of actually providing honest and true accounts.

Games: Castlevania LOS, no more needs to be said if you go to the Castlevania boards. ¬__¬

Politics: People listen to those guys on TV (who have their own agendas) discuss the people up for election instead of actually thinking about what they themselves want changed and then seeing which of the candidates hits all their marks BUT doesn't also introduce things that would not be deemed desirable to the voter him/herself. No, they just listen to that one guy who says this candidate is "honest", "a true patriot" and "supports the troops" and BAM they are duped into voting for him. Oh and how many people voted for Obama simply because he was black and he used the word "change" a lot (not saying Obama is bad, but if you vote for someone using that logic, that really is pointless). ¬__¬

Celebrities: "Hey, if The Game or snoop has a handkerchief in his back pocket then I'll have one too! GANGSTA!" "Oh! If so and so celebrity is endorsing this perfume it MUST be good!" ¬___¬.

The News: Propaganda.......argh. It really is shocking how the media covers up the mistakes of the government at times or will introduce a heavy bias. The most spine chilling example was how the media tried to make the Abu Ghraib prison story (the Iraqi prison prisoners who underwent physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, including torture, rape, sodomy, and homicide at the hands of American soldiers) appear as something minor and low key for over 2 months until finally the pictures of the torture were leaked. ¬___¬

Commercials: Eh, I guess this isn't so bad except for kids who end up pestering their parents. But I don't blame them. They are kids! If you are an adult and see an ad on TV that tells you to buy a this "new space age mop!" and you run to the nearest store to buy one (even though you never even USE a mop in your house) well then........that's pretty ridiculous. ¬___¬

Art: Who decides how much a painting is worth? A banker and the art critics under his payroll. It has gotten so out of hand now that if you don't get on your knees and play by their games you have no chance of making it big. ¬___¬

SO, yeah, there are other examples that I haven't touched upon but maybe you guys can do that. Are people too easily influenced by the media? I think so.

I myself am a medic. When I review a drug I don't let the drug company or others tell me that it is effective. I see for myself how much it has helped patients (in respectable trials), whether it would be appropriate for the people in my area that I would prescribe it to, its cost, side effects etc etc. If it ticks all of MY boxes then and only then will I adopt that drug. In fact, all doctors are given guidelines like this which they must assess drugs with before prescribing them. I suggest we all adopt this technique of critical analysis for games and all the other items above. It would help us to attain something that we ourselves truly enjoy/strived for.

Sure, the opinions of others are important but the facts are far more valuable/useful in most every case. An example related to LOS would be how some reviewers say they didn't like how much castle exploration there was which made the game not feel like CV (an opinion). Compare this to a fact such as this game having a multitude of different environments including snowy, swamp, forested land and castles amongst others (a fact). The opinion pushes a negativity onto the reader but the fact lets the reader judge for himself whether this variety is good or bad.

Don't wander in the dark and let the voices of others be your only guide. Open your eyes. =D

(P.S. I don't mean any offence to anyone, this is just my opinion and if yours is different, don't rage quit on me! Let us discuss our differences! lol =P)

So yeah, if there is anything pressing on your mind of late just jot it down below.

Be it a:

Question

Opinion

Dilemma

Suggestion

Other

I'll try and see if I can reply constructively =D.

Oh and if someone else posts something you wish to reply to......then go for it!

I just noticed it now (I found it under "Games Lists" which is found a little under "my posting history"). I know many of you have not listed your entire collection (YOU SHOULD! Just a game or two each time you log on to gamespot and you will be done without even realising!) My value is below. What is yours??

Estimated Collection Value:

$2,179.61

I have not included every game in my collection so far (and will probably likely edit this value or repost a new blog about this when i think it is appropriate). To be frank, I think my games collection is worth about double this considering games cost considerably more here in the UK and taking into account the fact that I have a few more games yet to add.

EDIT: So after adding a few games and noticing that I have games in my list that I do not physically own any more I have come to the conclusion that this is more a value representative of "Lifetime game collection value" rather than current collection value. My new value after adding a few games (honestly, I just added about 10 or so games O__O) is ......quite a leap from $1,259.37.

:S :S :S

Its a summer job mainly (although if I get a part time place it will be permanent) but its really awesome because of the benefits it will give my C.V. Once I graduate from medicine and become a doctor it will help me get into the hospitals I want.

Oh, the job? Its basically customer service BUT I'm based in a hospital and dealing with patients. The recruiters seemed really interested in my C.V. and me being a medic so hopefully if I keep this momentum going I can nail the job! Not sure how much the pay is but that really doesn't matter compared to the invaulable experience i will be getting.

WISH ME LUCK/SEND ME YOUR PRAYERS/WHATEVER ELSE IT IS YOU DO THAT WILL HELP ME GET THIS JOB!!! =P

YEAH!

So I finally got around to pre ordering some games that have really piqued my interest. If any of you are also getting the following make sure to add my PSN (its Wonzan) and mention you are one of my GS friends =D.

1. SUPER Street Fighter IV (from Amazon, no costume bonus but its very cheap)

2. Lost Planet 2 (from GAME, which gives a bonus map pack)

3. Red Dead Redemption (from Amazon, both cheap and I get the Golden Guns bonus)

I think that is the most PS3 games I have ever pre ordered at once. With exams in May I am going to have to lock my PS3 up for a while otherwise I willjust be playing games all day instead of studying. Ooo that reminds me, I should really deactivate my Facebook too O__O.

What games have you guys pre ordered/going to pre order?

*BIG sigh of relief*

That was a lot of hard work. I've been awake for 48 hours now. Did an all nighter of studying. I think I did pretty well.......God willing I will pass =D

Now to get stuck into FFXIII! =D

Thanks again for all the wishes, maybe one of you wished JUST hard enough to help me revise the right things for the exams =P

.....examinations never finish for a med student =[

This is just to remind me that I should not be on gamespot but also for you guys to say "good luck". I'm going to need it!!!

because I haven't got anyone to celebrate it with!!! Bah, its overrated anyway. Anyone else not doing anything special today? Anyone DOING something special today (in your case I should have said "did" since you probably would not have read my blog on valentines day).

Happy V-day to everyone regardless!