Friday and the weekend (8-10th March)

Friday:

Morning research and procrastination, and found out I am clean of diseases from pathology results. I knew this already, but now it's on an official yellow sticky note with numbers.

Friday evening: I found out I'm in Trent again, with no change to score or placement – excellent news!

3 hours later, found out I'd failed a finals exam – OSCE 2 :(

Distress and emotional responses followed.

I had to watched in silent agony as friends happily asserted their new doctor-y-ness on Facebook.

I was then waiting for info as to what happens next. Got an email with a lot of information in it, so in my semi-delirious state had to read it about 3 times to figure out what exactly I needed to do now. It turned out I needed to email just one person for all the different things. Did so.

I will lose about 2 weeks of free time at the end of the elective to go to a feedback appointment in mid April, then there is a revision week in what would be my last week of elective on the Gold Coast...

At the time, it was like my world was ending. I felt like this was the final stamp of disapproval from the medschool that actually, no, I'm not good enough, and shouldn't be a doctor, and there's a reason you've not been able to get through a year at medschool (bar 3^rd year) without failing something. But apparently I know enough (passed knowledge), and can jump through their hoops sufficiently to examine, diagnose, and relay back some sort of spiel in 6 mins (passed OSCE 1).

What worried/upset me most was that I felt like OSCE 2 was actual doctor stuff. You get 5 stations, 15 mins each, with a scenario – usually a prescribing, communications skills and ethics, history +/- examination, history alone, and another random station. The scenarios themselves can literally be anything. Much like what you get in real life.

But I failed 3 out of the 5 stations. I knew I'd fluffed up one – I had a complete mind-blank and panicked, it was my first station of my first exam of my Finals. Lots of pressure and my brain shut down about the scenario until I walked out of the building – I then realised what I was supposed to do. Bollocks.

Failed, but kind of expected.

It turned out I scored quite highly on it though, surprisingly, but everyone else must've done better, to put me in the fail section of marks.

OSCEs are marked in a complicated way. You get marked on a checklist of items – fair enough. But that's compared with how everyone else taking that exam on that day did. So even if you're a clear pass in the examiner's mind, if everyone else scored better, you're failed.

This sucks.

This is why I failed the one station in OSCE 2 that I was dead certain I was guaranteed to pass. I nailed it. I got the diagnosis in 5 mins of questioning, and, knowing the diagnosis from the history, performed all the appropriate tests, and confidently/competently demonstrated that it had to be this specific tendon in the shoulder that was inflamed because of this test being positive and none of the others. Boom. Nailed it. In real life, I would have the exact diagnosis and the patient would be treated correctly, etc, etc.

Failed. Because everyone else did the same thing. And I got one mark less than them. That's silly. I'm clearly competent at the exam, why on earth would you fail me for it just because my cohort/year are a bunch of clever dicks and know-it-alls?

It works the other way, too – if you screw up on a station because it's hard, not because you personally are a screw up, you can still pass if everyone else does badly. It all depends on how everyone else scores.

This is still not cool – your exam results are out of your hands, because they're not so much based on your performance, they're based on everyone else's.

The third failed station was the ethics/comms station. I have no idea why. It may be to do with me counselling for a more serious disease than was actually present in the patient, but sometimes the medschool leans towards safety as a top priority, and at others they lean towards reality.

It's often difficult to see and realise which one they want. I did what they would have wanted if they wanted me to be extra safe.

The patient loses consciousness after standing up from driving her bus. No fit, and came around quickly according to a witness. It was classic benign postural hypotension. I said as much, but better worded. I emphasised that though this was most likely, to be safe we ought to rule out epilepsy. And until I can rule out epilepsy, I kind of have to treat you as though you've got it. This means no driving until the diagnostic test comes back, which means no work, and so on for my spiel under “epilepsy counselling”.

Presumably, they wanted “reassurance and benign postural hypotension counselling”, but could have been gunning for either, depending on the mark scheme. I feel like you could argue that one either way, if this was the case. If it was a form of seizure that wasn't a classical presentation, a busload of people are in danger when she goes back to work the next day. We'd be sued for so much money. So...a busload of people's safety, or assume it's classical benign postural hypotension. Pick one.

There is a medical student curse: in a 50/50 choice, the medstudent will always pick the wrong one.

If it's not this, then I likely missed multiple very important somethings entirely to get a low score of 10 out of 30ish, and I will have no idea what the problem was until feedback in mid April.

Le sigh.

Sarturday:

Happiness and sunshine and a perfect day out at the beach for only $3.20 for the whole day.

There was a free beach art/sculpture display on today, that you could wander up to and have a look at. It was all rather nice, and some bits were very cool. It was very busy so photos have random semi naked strangers in them.

To the Beach!

Good job I didn't bring my spear then.

Windmill chimes, made of bamboo.

Twisty thing.

Fishing rods

That fish cray.

"Portal"

"Palm Tree"

I made up for a lack of spending during the daytime by treating myself to a steak and pint for dinner at a pub near to my accommodation. This cost a lot, and I learned that “fillet” here doesn't actually mean fillet steak. It's more like a fillet of steak. I think it was sirloin – so it wasn't bad. But it wasn't fillet. Cheapest available pint - $10 = £6.80. Never mind. It's only once a week, for one, and this was a commiseration dinner. I can spend a little bit more if I'm in Aus for 2 weeks less, right?

Sunday:

Did this blog and boring jobs. Ranked my top 10 jobs in Trent (yes, still do all that, the offer is conditional on me passing before a certain deadline, which I should if the resit goes to plan).

Happy Mother's Day!