Clear!

I'm not a joiner, a keener, or one of those peeps who aims to make medical school in to an episode of scrubs. On occasion though, I do like to challenge myself a little, and get involved with some of the activities that go on around med school.

Yesterday for shirts and giggles, my study group (well, more or less) responded to the desperate plea of one of our fellow second years to field a team for an emergency medicine challenge. The theme of which was "explosion." I'll be honest, I only got involved because one of my colleagues is a practicing paramedic. Who else would you want to leave a team of novices who have about as little emergency medical training as one can get?

Having said that, we were all qualified in basic life support... we also had an ex-military nurse, two life-guards, a pharmacist who could draw up drugs and a couple newbs. Keen, but still newbs (especially me.) Other than that, we had had no preparation for the coming disaster.

A few different explosion themed medical scenarios were set up, and we got to compete with a couple teams from Radelaide and another Flinders team, who were equally unprepared. To save the suspense - we either came first or third (due to some confusion over which flinders team was team 1 or team 2.) The important thing being that we didn't come last and beat out a team of clinical students.

The scenarios were a mix of cannulating an arm and suturing an open wound. Single patient with blunt chest trauma and a tension pneumothorax. Single patient thrown by an explosion in to a car, with a broken pelvis and internal haemorrhage. And then a multiple casualty scenario, where you had triage three different casualties, get them on backboards and carry them off to an aid station.

It was all good fun, though my contribution was nothing particularly life saving, just jumping up and down a bit on a dummy chest etc. It was a valuable lesson in how to handle the excitement and pressure of trauma.

So apart from that, I passed my exams and did as well as I'd hoped in anatomy. I'm struggling to get motivated for brain and behaviour though. It's... uninspiring maybe? I'll put my head down soon. Once I pass GIT/Cardio/Resp exam on Monday...

The pace of things this year is a lot more intense than last year. I will say that.