The Angry Medic

So I'm A Junior Doctor, Now What?

2012-02-02T17:01:00.000Z

Yes, that's right, I'm now ACTUALLY a real doctor (Am I dreaming? Is this real? Pinch me! Wait, you're female? Pinch me lower...no, lowwwerrrr...what's that you say? Kids and my parents read this blog? Oh HARHAR, only joking. Hi mom! --Editor) and I have to admit, it's not...exactly what I thought it would be (As in, there's no marching importantly onto the ward banging through double doors or sex three times a night in an on-call room. Kids, if you're thinking about doing medicine because you saw an episode of Grey's Anatomy, STOP NOW. Go become investment bankers. --Ed).

Things are a little busy around the house now so I won't be typing my mega-long and totally super-interesting and funny post on what I'm doing after med school, but I do have a blog post series coming up about nurses* and how they ~~can't keep their hands off me~~ have affected my life as a ~~poor bastard~~ medical student, for better and for worse. I did however discover this blog post from the Militant Medical Nurse about junior doctors and why you should shower them with tender loving care:

I had some real bad days as an NHS staff nurse. I felt like the stress and frustration would kill me. But there was a never a day where I felt like I would rather be a Junior Doctor.

Damn straight, Militant Nurse. (Can I call you MillieNurse? MILFyNurse? No? Okay I'll shut up now. --Ed.)

I've always been a big fan of nurses, and recently they've played a bigger part in my professional and personal life than usual. But I know they don't always get along. It's nice to see one of em sympathising with us**.

*coming up soon on The Angry Medic/Doctor/Whatever the hell I am - what medical school doesn't tell you about nurses! How I manage to piss off a nurse! How I manage to piss off a non-nurse by calling her nurse! Okay so maybe that last one doesn't require much explanation.

**okay, so in her very next post she also says "But once they [doctors] get past the level of "junior" I just want nothing to do with them." It's a, um, love-hate relationship...

What I Did Right After Getting Finals Results

2012-01-28T20:43:00.003Z

The email I sent immediately after getting results. Okay so my exam co-ordinator's name isn't really Awesomesauce, but she is AWESOME. SAUCE.
I've taken a lot of crap from some of Imperial's admin departments, but she's God's gift to administrative services. (And speedy email replies - these two emails were like 45 seconds apart. Which begs the question - how in God's name does she type so fast?)

In my last post I mentioned that what I did right after getting my results was send an email to my university asking for confirmation that these were really exam results and they weren't playing a massive April Fool's joke on me as revenge for all the times I fell asleep in lectures. You guys thought I was joking, right? I wasn't. Here's the proof. These images are a little doctored* to protect anonymity, but they are original, complete with crappy Imperial College email client background.

Seriously. I couldn't believe it. I thought they were trolling me one last time. Only after getting that second email did I finally start to celebrate (and by "celebrate" I may or may not mean lying on the ground in a fetal position crying my eyes out screaming "IT'S FINALLYYY OVERRRR". Cough. These are emotional moments, okay?! --Editor).

*AHAHA seewhatIdidthere? "Doctored", cos this was the email that told me I'd become a doctor, geddit geddit? Yes? No? Hello? Hi mom!

The Angry Medic Becomes The Angry Doctor

2012-01-27T21:36:00.003Z

My graduation at Imperial College London, October 2010. What's that you say?

Your mother could Photoshop better than me? Oh, shaddap.

Yes, that's right folks. Amidst stunned looks of disbelief, screams of fainting ladies and angry curses muttered by my med school lecturers, I finally graduated as a doctor in October 2010. Why the long wait to update? Cos I've been sitting here for the past few months pinching myself repeatedly asking myself if I didn't just dream the whole thing. (I'm only joking. Partly. --Editor)

It wasn't easy. The finals were tough, and I didn't think I did as well as I ended up doing. I had a LOT of help along the way, and sitting the exams was a truly humbling experience. I could never, never have done it without the help of a few key people whom I hope to thank in coming posts (in a completely serious and non-humorous manner. Cough. Why are you looking at me like that? --Ed.) In fact, the first thing I did when I got the results email was contact the exams co-ordinator right away asking if the results were real. No, really. Don't tell my mom.

Also, now that I'm safely far far away, I can finally reveal the university I've been ~~terrorising~~ studying at for the past 3 years after Cambridge:

Geddit geddit? Cos it's Imperial College, and the bad guys in Star Wars are Imperials,

so it's funny cos I drew Imperials in Imperial, hahaha...

okay so I haven't done this for a while, okay? Leave me alone.

So yeah. I'm a real doctor now.

How does it feel? Is it worth it? Short answer: I'm scared shitless. Long answer: That's for another post, the second part to my Cambridge graduation post. (MWAHAHA now you have to come back and read more of my crap if you want to find out! Or you could...not come back. Probably healthier in the long run. --Ed.)

If you've been here before, thanks for staying with me all these years. I'll write again soon about graduation and what it's like to be a Real Doctor (in two words: scared shitless. Oh wait, did I say that already? --Ed.). Happy Chinese New Year!

The Trials and Tribulations of General Practice, Part 2

2010-11-22T21:33:00.002Z

"Hello ma'am, is it ok for my medical student to help insert your contraceptive patch?"

"Um, but...he's male."

"Is that a problem?"

"What? He's MALE! What do THEY understand about contraception?!"

o_O

The Trials and Tribulations of General Practice

2010-11-17T13:02:00.008Z

What's a GP? That much-loved, much-maligned creature that nobody ever knows quite how to classify, that first-line defence against common illnesses, that gatekeeper to the entire healthcare system - everybody has a different opinion of GPs.

So what's a GP?

I don't know, and I don't give a rat's arse either.

All I do know is that for the next 3 weeks, I am medical student (read: unpaid secretary, general dogsbody and coffee bitch --Ed.) to five of 'em. And I'm already finding out that contrary to all the tales of cushy, boring, golf-afternoon-filled lives we've all heard about GPs, their lives are anything but boring.

But because I'm far too generous and giving (snigger --Ed.) to keep all my misery to myself, I'll be sharing choice morsels of my adventures in GP-land with all my glorious fans (yes, all two of you! I lost one reader last month. --Ed.) in an attempt to 1. stave off all the hate mail I've been getting since stopping blogging, and 2. stop my brain from leaking out of my ears in boredom whilst I wait for this damn tea kettle to start working for the 36th time today. God, you'd think with all this money they'd at least get a working kettle.

*****

These are actual anecdotes heard in clinic. You can't make this shit up, folks.

To an 87-year-old woman today: "Hello ma'am, I'm going to give you your injection."

"What?"

"Hello ma'am, I'm going to GIVE you your INJECTION."

"Eh? What?"

"HELLO MA'AM I'M GOING TO GIVE YOU YOUR INJECTION!"

"Quiet, boy. What d'you think I am, deaf?"

*****

Wait, what? You're still awake? Uhm, wow. Wasn't expecting that. Bonus anecdote for not falling asleep/throwing rotten vegetables at your screen!

"Hello sir, how can I help you today?"

"Promise me you won't judge me, doctor."

"Um, okay. What seems to be the problem?"

"I can't stop eating those Big Daddy boxes from KFC, doctor."

"Sigh...I know the feeling."

Censored

2010-04-13T18:38:00.006+01:00

Recently my blog was discovered.

I've spoken many times about freedom of speech on the Internet, especially for medical bloggers. Protecting your identity becomes a lot more than just wondering what your boyfriend will think when he learns you've been ranting about your sex life online. When you have a real job, with real patients, and unfortunately very real whackjobs for colleagues and superiors, blogging becomes a catharsis of sorts.

But unfortunately it can also get you into very real trouble. Remember HospitalPhoenix. Remember Angry NHS Doctor. Even The Little Medic got into some trouble back in his student days. And now people are whispering that the highest of the high, the Big Daddy of Go-Ahead-Try-And-Find-My-Identity-Out, NHS Blog Doctor himself, was forced to retire because someone finally found out who he was.

It never mattered to me, because right from the start I wasn't anonymous, and my only real enemy was the University of Cambridge, whose policy on hate mail is basically "nyah nyah we're bigger than you". But it had to happen someday - and now it has.

I've been discovered.

And by people whose opinions, unfortunately, matter to me. You can only adopt a screw-you-I-don't-care-what-you-think policy for so long, because as every movie villain in history knows, there's always someone whose opinions you can't afford to ignore. So these days when I drag my sorry carcass into my room after a long hard day and just feel like jumping online and ranting about that midwife who yelled at me using the most colourful expletives possible --

I stop. And remember that somebody's watching me.

It feels horrible.

Happy New Year - Now Gimme Your Stuff

2010-01-07T06:31:00.005Z

Brand new year! Full of energy, I walk into my hospital's locker room on my first day, brimming with love and joy and the desire to help as many patients as possible. My mind full of all the reasons I chose medicine and all the ways I can make humanity better today, I walk to my locker and see this:

Thankfully even a mince-pie-addled idiot like me knew better than to leave anything in it over the holidays. As I turn away I see this pasted on the back of the door, along with some astute medical student's scribbled warning underneath:

Nice of them to give us warning though, isn't it?

Merry Christmas and a Very Angry New Year

2009-12-26T07:09:00.003Z

Contrary to popular opinion (and by popular opinion I mean moronic spammers who scoop their brains back out of the toilet bowl every morning after their daily dump and whose vocabulary is limited to Chris Rock lines minus all the bits that are actually clever -- man that felt good. --Editor), I am still alive! Just busy, very busy. Which I'll admit most people are (except for aforementioned spammers --Ed.) except that most people have better time management skills than those of a mentally challenged amoeba. But enough about spammers.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all, and I'll see you after the New Year.

Oh and (massive Doctor Who spoilers - if you haven't watched the Christmas special STOP READING AND CLICK HERE FOO' --Ed.)

THEY TURNED OBAMA INTO JOHN SIMM!

FTW!!!!!11!!

Writer's Block

2009-09-18T11:36:00.004+01:00

Everyone gets it. Sometimes you sit in front of the computer, and you want to write, but it just. Doesn't. Happen.

It's not that I've been lazy to update this blog. It's not that I have no stories to tell - on the contrary I've just finished my General Practice rotation, and have had my whole worldview on GPs radically altered. It's not that I haven't pissed off any doctors/nurses/janitors with access to lots of sharp pointy objects recently - on the contrary some of my colleagues have suggested wearing a paper bag on to the wards to avoid persecution.

And I've had ups and downs. Rollercoaster rides the likes of which I haven't experienced in years. People who've come into my life whom I can't decide whether I love or hate. In short, the things that medical school does to you.

But it's all happened so...suddenly.

So I'm kinda reeling from it all right now. And I ask for your patience (yes, all three of you who still bother to check this blog. It's an old joke, but probably never more true than now. --Editor) Updates will come soon. You'll laugh. You'll cry. But most of all, you'll wonder--

How the hell did they allow this guy into medical school?

Do Not Disturb: Medical Students At Work

2009-08-12T14:29:00.007+01:00

Newly graduated doctors, class of 2009.

As a medical student you get used to a feeling of power very quickly. Striding down the hospital hallways, stethoscope draped prominently across your shoulders and an important look on your face, patients and staff make way for you, reverent looks on their faces. There is an implicit trust across the consultation room table, even though the only lives you're going to save anytime soon are those of your greedy intestinal bacteria as you choose which sandwich you're going to have for lunch.

It is with full awareness of this trust that I bring to you these vignettes from med school. I've only been on the wards one week, but have managed to piss off two consultants, three janitors and one VERY large clinical teaching co-ordinator who may or may not have been the local wrestling champion in her original village in Africa. Stay tuned for more faith-reinforcing tales like this:

On Tuesday afternoon, three supposedly world-class medical students in a supposedly world-class university stand in the hallway of a supposedly world-class hospital. Their brows are furrowed in intense concentration, as if lives hung in the balance of their deliberations. Thick textbooks are clutched in their hands. The conversation goes something like this:

"Hey dudes. You watch House, right?"

"Um yeah. Why?"

"Cause here comes Asian Cuddy. Act natural."

"Dude, why're you using that textbook to cover your--"

"ACT NATURAL!"

Three supposedly world-class medical students, between them holding degrees in Cardiology, Surgery & Anaesthesia and Experimental Psychology, whistle nonchalantly as the Clinical Teaching Co-ordinator walks by, smiling sweetly as she chats on the phone.

"Dude that did NOT look like Cuddy."

"It so totally DID! Did you see the cleavage on that one?"

"Meh...I see the resemblance. But-- ooh she dropped a pen. She's bending over!"

Silence for a moment.

"Okay."

"Yeah."

"NOW she looks like Dr Cuddy."

More silence.

"Hey, didn't surgical rounds start like ten minutes ago?"

"SHIT."

In Memoriam: Yasmin Ahmad, 1958-2009

2009-07-28T02:40:00.005+01:00

One of my favourite filmmakers, the talented indie film genius Yasmin Ahmad, has passed on.

Her films were often controversial and like so many geniuses throughout history, she endured censure from many quarters for daring to speak her mind; still others saw her genius and showered international praise on her work for being ahead of its time.

Her films have been screened and praised at film festivals all across the world: Cannes, Berlin, San Francisco, Singapore, Tokyo, the Créteil International Women's Film Festival ; you name it, she's been there. And been applauded. And been told her work is visionary.

Yasmin Ahmad passed away with the same drama that sadly plagued her whole life: whilst recording a program for national television, she suffered a stroke and slumped forward in her chair, motionless. She was rushed to hospital and successfully thrombolysed, but sadly succumbed to intracranial haemorrhage 48 hours later.

Her first breakout film was filmed in my old school. We all developed a special affinity for her, and she never let us down, even in the face of censure and resistance.

Another shining star in the international arts scene has been extinguished. She will be missed.

Christopher Lee Finally Knighted; Balance of Universe Restored

2009-07-25T12:31:00.000+01:00

Note: If you've been living under a rock for the last 60 years (or are a first-year houseman doctor) and do not know who Sir Christopher Lee is, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE DO NOT POST THIS IN THE COMMENTS OR SO HELP ME GOD I WILL TRACK YOU DOWN AND BITE YOUR HEAD OFF WITH MY BLUNT, GAP-TOOTHED, CAVITY-RIDDEN FRONT TEETH. You think those terrorists who capture reporters and saw their heads off on camera with blunt knives are scary? You ain't seen my front teeth. There's a reason why I alone out of 500 students was asked not to smile in my graduation photo. Now excuse me whilst I go take my Ritalin. --Editor

Image taken from the official website. He holds the Guinness World Record for most movie roles, so you've definitely seen or heard him before. If you haven't, FOR GOD'S SAKE DO NOT POST THIS IN THE COMMENTS. If you do, hire a bodyguard and tell him to watch specifically for crazed fanboys.

Veteran actor Christopher Lee, one of my favourite people in the world (see above Note), has been conferred a Knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours List, making him Sir Christopher Lee.

Lee, 87, has spent his career terrifying cinema-goers.
As well as appearing in classic horror films such as 1958's "Dracula" and 1959's "The Mummy", Sir Christopher also played memorable baddie Scaramanga in the 1974 James Bond classic "The Man With The Golden Gun".
In recent years he starred as Saruman in "The Lord Of The Rings" trilogy and Count Dooku in the "Star Wars" prequels.

All I have to say to this is:

LIKE, DUDES! FINALLY!

You know, I was the one who originally broke to the world the news that Christopher Lee was reprising his role as Count Dooku in the animated film Star Wars: The Clone Wars. I posted the question on his official website and his son-in-law replied, making the official announcement that was picked up by news sites everywhere. Yep, that was me, folks. And my mom said I'd never make an impact in life. Hah! (Oh wait, my parents read this blog. Hi mom! You look lovely today! --Ed.)

Actual Star Wars statuette by Gentle Giant. No, I do not own a signed edition
which I keep in my room surrounded by flowers and love candles. Really.
Stop asking or I'll hit you with my signed edition Force FX Count Dooku lightsaber.

In Search Of Unprotected Text - Another Blogger Bites The Dust (Or Does He?)

2009-06-25T07:33:00.011+01:00

(Apologies in advance for those of you arriving at this post from Google expecting a discreet dating service or Thailand travel agents. Not that I can't tell you about both, including which massage parlours to avoid - gonorrhoea's a bitch. --Editor)

If you've been reading the comments on my last post, you'll have heard that the Unprotected Text blog has mysteriously disappeared without explanation. There's a comment on my last post by an anonymous visitor announcing the worst:

I've (sic) very sorry to report that the author of 'Unprotected Text' blog tragically died earlier this week in a road accident. His family requested the blog be taken down, and this was done so in accordance to their wishes. My thoughts are with them this week.

A couple of other commenters, who seem to know Unprotected Text's author and refer to him by name (which the above bad-news bear doesn't), have found no sign of this being the case. I hope he's okay - sometimes shit just happens to bloggers and they have to stop blogging. (Or, as in my case, you're so lazy you have sloths protesting outside your door for putting their species to shame. --Ed.)

This reminds me of the Dr Crippen death hoax last year, which I covered in this post, and which was revealed when Dr Crippen suddenly came back to life, becoming the world's first zombie doctor. The culprit was a disgruntled nurse who took offense at his nurse-bashing ways and took advantage of the good doctor's writer's block/holiday/meltdown. Things ended well there though (well, except that I slaved for hours on Photoshop to create this masterpiece for him and he didn't even mention it. Ungrateful old man. All I wanted was a little love, daddy! *cocks gun*)

Any news on Unprotected Text's status would be appreciated. Coming up: Christopher Lee FINA-friggin-LLY gets knighted, and I reveal my fetish for old British men. Completely unrelated posts, of course. Cough.

Look at this shit! I slaved for hours to create this Da Vinci-shaming
artistic brilliance! What's that you say? Your Indonesian maid could

do better and she just learnt to use Photoshop yesterday? Oh screw you.

Free Surgery For Spammers!

2009-05-17T15:22:00.006+01:00

The changing room door squeaks loudly as I enter, hoping to change quickly and sneak into theatre without anyone noticing how ridiculously late I am. Naturally, this catches the attention of everyone in the changing room, and who should be sitting closest to the door but my latest boss, Komrad Konsultant Surgeon. God must still be mad at me from last week when I kicked that little puppy down my road. (I was reading a textbook whilst walking, okay? Also said textbook may then have ended up on said puppy. NOT MY FAULT. --Editor) I mutter under my breath to the door, "Thanks a lot, asshole." (And yes, I talk to inanimate objects, okay? It makes up for the fact that I have no friends. DON'T JUDGE ME. --Ed.)

Komrad Konsultant sweeps out the door, giving me a look that would make even Ron Jeremy's* unmentionables shrivel so much he'd need Viagra for the rest of his life. I go to theatre and look at the surgery list for the day, and I swear God must've heard what I called that door, because typed on that sheet were 2 haemorrhoid repairs, 2 anal fistulotomies (back-to-back!) and a rectal biopsy.

Bummer**.

As I scanned the list and prepared for an afternoon of going where no man had gone before (colonoscopes don't count), I swear all I could think of was -

how I wish these patients were all the spammers on my blog.

Hell, I'd do it for free. I'd even give them a huge discount on anaesthetics.

It was a while before I realised the scrub nurses were staring at my evil grinning and hand-rubbing. Man, I hate spammers.

*Famous porn star known for his huge-- um, ego. Good friend of mine. Birds of a feather must stick together. Right ladies?
**No pun intended***.
***Oh, who am I kidding.

What They Don't Tell You About Medical School

2009-05-09T23:22:00.005+01:00

1. That calling a doctor "Sister" or worse, "Nursie" by mistake is going to earn you an hour-long scolding (during which the word "bastard" is used, and not in reference to the illegitimate child being born to the crack-dealing prostitute in the next ward), a very sore ear from previously-mentioned scolding, and a knowing snigger from every nurse you pass by for the next two weeks. (Not that I'd know anything about that, of course. Cough.)

2. That when you put in a cannula in an elderly patient in ICU (Intensive Care Unit) for the first time, YOU ARE NOT GOING TO GET IT RIGHT. And yes, the ward nurse WILL call you in two hours telling you that the patient's arm has swelled up bigger than Donald Trump's ego, and the patient's family wants to know which third-rate night-school retard doctor put that cannula in. (Not that I'd know anything about that either, of course. Cough cough.)

3. That your time management skills are going to decrease to those of a hyperactive chimpanzee addicted to Ritalin, and that this combined with a succession of emo posts and a very unfortunate exam timetable (Sunday afternoon clinical OSCE. 'Cos that's the only time they can clear the hospital's outpatients department --Editor) is going to reduce your previously impressive blog readership (three whole readers! --Ed.) to shameful (myself. Ooh, and my flatmate's dog. --Ed.)

That's all for now, folks, but right after exams I'm going to start posting reasonably regularly again. Med school has once again become the widescreen madhouse it started out to be, and hey I figure as long as I'm suffering, I might as well make some people laugh. (And if exams DON'T go well, forget the blog - come see me at your local McDonald's and I'll tell you the story in person. I'll be the guy mopping the floors - did you know they DON'T pay minimum wage? --Ed.)

The Power To Choose, Part One

2009-04-05T00:39:00.002+01:00

The sun shines into the room as it slowly begins to set over the small hill behind the hospital, dotted with cottages and church steeples. I squint in the dusky light as Komrad Konsultant Kardiologist, my latest boss, flips open my end-of-term assessment form and sits down at his table.

"So, Angry...let's see." He begins.

I brace myself. Here come the hard questions about why I wasn't at ward rounds, why his patients have no idea who I am, and that one time I fell asleep in a patient's bed...

But Komrad Konsultant stops flipping the file, and looks out the window. "I think you've done quite well, Angry. I think you'll go far, in fact."

I blink. Me, going far? ME? Has he got the wrong file? What has he been smoking?

Komrad Konsultant adjusts his glasses as the sun glints off them. "You see...all this work you do now may sometimes seem pointless. All the slogging, all the early mornings, all the nasty doctors ordering you around..." He closes the file.

"What you have to remember is that you're storing choice for the future." Now he looks at me directly. "The really successful people in life, Angry, they reach a level where they can choose where they want to go. Which hospital, which specialty, which job. They write their own tickets. Everybody else, they have to hope and pray. But if you're REALLY good...you get to choose."

He signs the assessment form, ticks the 'EXCELLENT' box and hands it to me. "I think you're one of those who'll get to choose."

I sit for a while, just staring at him, stunned. Then I walk out of his room in a bit of a daze.

I don't think I deserved such high praise. Not at all. I haven't been focusing my energies where I should be lately. And to some extent I've betrayed my dream of clinical medicine, after moaning and ranting about it for three years in Cambridge. And I've made a few big mistakes. But hopefully it's not too late to correct them.

And it's not just me Komrad Konsultant was talking about. We all deserve the power to choose. So here's to working harder. Here's to storing up choice for the future. Thanks, Dr B.

Pain Management

2009-03-27T11:40:00.005Z

Life's been tough recently. Events have been crashing together and teaching me the real meaning of what it means to be a clinical medic in London. Trials and tribulations never seem to stop, and come at you from all different directions - from hospital, from fellow students, from non-medical friends, even from the people you least expect.

And just like in medicine, what you thought was something you knew, turns out to be quite a different thing altogether.

Two big events have thrown me off-balance recently and forced me to seriously evaluate my direction in life. And I've also come to realise that I'm a little immature for my age. (Hey, just look at any other entry on this blog for proof. --Editor) But it's okay to crash and burn every once in a while - everybody does it. It's a human survival strategy.

The pain, however, is difficult to manage. I can't just put up a paracetamol or morphine drip like I would for a patient in hospital. So I have to work this out from basics, and do a few things that scare me. But hey, the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.

Image credit: troymayr.com

A Confession

2009-02-24T01:43:00.004Z

I have to come clean with something.

You know when people reach this sort of decision, it means that the guilt they're keeping inside is unbearable. It is the kind where you lose sleep thinking about it, wake up being reminded of it and go through your day with it slowly eating away at your insides. But it's over now - I'm washing my hands clean of this horrible truth I have been keeping bottled up inside.

I know I'm going to disappoint a lot of people out there. Hell, I'll probably get more than a few raised eyebrows and people disowning me as a friend, and some of my senior doctors will probably write me bad references and ruin my future job prospects. But I'd like to let you know that I appreciate our friendships thus far and all the good times we've had together.

I just watched Gossip Girl and I like it... *sigh*

(This post was shamelessly stolen from a buddy who also came to this confession a year ago. Since then he has been in therapy for his obliterated self-esteem. At least I'll have company when I join his psychiatrist.)

Diagnosis: Obama Fever

2009-01-20T14:02:00.005Z

President Abraham Lincoln would be proud.

A glimpse of how Cambridge feels today:

Photo taken of actual notice board from one of the Cambridge colleges.

WOOHOO!

An Awkward Moment

2009-01-15T17:52:00.005Z

Ward rounds this morning in hospital with Komrade Konsultant. I am as usual performing my Oscar-winning routine of acting awake whilst actually falling asleep on the nearest comatose patient's bed. Then Komrade Konsultant's cardiac arrest pager goes off.

Everyone freezes. I snap wide awake. Ooh, a cardiac arrest! Surely he'll take some of us poor medical students along, right? Finally, I get to see if it's actually like E.R. or Grey's Anatomy. I grab my stethoscope, close my folder and almost kick some old lady's wheelchair over in my rush to get to the door--

--and Komrade Konsultant turns his pager off, tosses it back into his pocket and turns back to the patient's folder, saying:

"Cardiac arrest? Screw that, I haven't even had my Starbucks yet."

Gives you real faith in the hospital system doesn't it?

Lost In Translation

2009-01-10T10:58:00.005Z

Me being examined by Dr Kim Jong-il. (Fine, so I've put on a bit of weight, okay?)

After an extended Christmas holiday spent mostly getting fat on turkey and junk food (see above picture) and trying very, very hard to get the lyrics for this hilarious Saturday Night Live music video (and it's medically-related too! --Ed.) out of my head, I returned to Stalingrad General Hospital for a week of lectures this week. And I don't know if it was just me or Komrade Professor's droning voice putting even the flies in the lecture theatre to sleep, but I heard some pretty weird stuff every time I actually paid attention to what was being said:

"You may be surprised to hear that the field of medicine is not so like to the aviation industry. In fact, the two fields are quite different." Heard during a lecture on patient safety and statistics (and almost certainly taken out of context, because I heard it as soon as I woke up.) No shit, Sherlock! DU-UH.

"Be careful what you say during your exams. I once examined a student who gave 'Huntington's chorea' as an answer, and so I followed up by asking him "So what can you tell me about chorea?" The student sat there for a second, then leaned forward slowly and, in all seriousness, asked me, "Which one? North or South Korea?" "

Okay that woke me up.

Happy New Year to my loyal readers (yes, all three of you) and stay tuned - I've got no shortage of miserable tales to keep you entertained. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a Suicidal Medical Students support group meeting to go to. Bonne nuit!

The Chronicles of Hernia, Week 2

2008-12-22T01:37:00.000Z

After enduring an entire first week of pep talks by clinical school bigwigs who spend more time posing for newspaper pictures than actually spending time with students and whom we'll probably never see again until Graduation Day, I stepped into Stalingrad General Hospital on my first day full of admonitions to "make it a positive experience" and "clinical school is what you make it" and "think positive!" (and also "for God's sake, don't accept a verbal caution from the police when you get caught piss drunk at the local pub", but that's slightly beside the point. -Ed.) So like a good little boy who's read The Secret twice cover to cover without falling asleep/clawing my eyes out/having to buy the movie instead, I gird my loins, tell myself it's gonna be an abso-friggin-lutely amazing day, and step into the hospital.

My ward is on the 9th floor. I have 15 minutes to make it upstairs. Plenty of time, right? Right. Until I see that the one lift that isn't hovering resolutely near the top floor is out of service. And just to rub it into our faces, it's even got a special icon to tell us poor sods that it's on a coffee break:

Har har. We have a comic genius on the maintenance staff! I scoot over to the stairs and leg it up 9 flights of stairs, stopping only twice to have a minor heart attack. When I finally arrive half-dead on the 9th floor but fearful of Komrade Professor's wrath, I meekly enter the teaching room but lo and behold! Komrade Professor isn't there. He's been called away on urgent business, probably to give the Queen her annual physical or check out this new wart on President Obama's finger or whatever. So us peons do some practice physical examinations, then I go out to get a drink. Returning to the room, sure to find my fellow students eager to proceed in productive horizon-widening learning, I see instead scrawled on my notes:

I'm sure they had something urgent to attend to. How nice of them to leave me a note! Ah well, I can get on with things myself. It's not like they were being mean and scribbling all over my notes or anything! Walking to the ward, I turn over to my patient list and see:

Yes, that DOES say what you think it says.
("I want Angry to come and examine me...mmmm...")

Oh, I am feeling SO positive right now.

The Angry Medic Makes Grand Rounds

2008-12-21T20:59:00.005Z

Grand Rounds, that famous weekly round-up of the best of the medical blogosphere, is up in its 13th incarnation of its 5th volume (no I can't understand its numbering system either --Ed.) at A Chronic Dose. And amazingly, my emo entry two posts ago was accepted and I made Grand Rounds.

Which is weird because I never make grand rounds on time in real life - leading to the nice collection of consultant-shaped bootprints growing on my arse. (Hell, once when I was on a surgical urology firm, the registrar in charge of ward rounds turned silently to me, right after I burst through the ward doors breathless from my marathon sprint up 8 flights of stairs, and said, dead seriously, "Maybe we should give you a hemi-vasectomy. To better help you understand the patient's experience." Then he turned back and resumed talking to the patient as if nothing had happened, oblivious to the fact that 5 junior doctors, 6 medical students, 3 nurses and about 80 patients had all heard him and were now staring at me with the same expression that you'd show a prisoner on his way to the guillotine (or Steven Seagal on his way to about any awards ceremony). Surgeons are scary bastards, aren't they? --Ed.)

Grand Rounds Vol. 5 No. 13
The Angry Medic learns from a patient that really, some wounds never heal.

Go check it out, it's full of posts a lot better than mine. Next week's Christmas Grand Rounds will be held at Highlight Health. Merry Christmas folks! And remember, leaving milk and cookies for Santa gives him diabetes.

The Adventure Begins (Again)

2008-12-15T18:36:00.006Z

The Angry Medic's new home, a top socialist NHS

teaching hospital in London.

London! The financial centre of the world. A city bustling with life, teeming with people from all walks of life, headed towards all sorts of destinies. A metropolis full of excitement, dreams, possibilities, adrenaline--

-- and one clueless medical student who can't read a Tube map to save his life. (Literally. Who knew that chavs liked to beat up clueless-looking people wandering around in Cambridge University hoodies? And why the hell did they call me a "toff"? I don't even like toffee. --Ed.)

So I'm in London, situated at a top teaching hospital and finally in the thick of the good ol' socialist NHS. For simplicity's sake (and because I have fewer comedy ideas than Will Ferrell on a good day), I shall refer to my hospital as Stalingrad General Hospital from now on. (refer to above mind-bogglingly brilliant Photoshopped picture. Who needs sex when you have Photoshop? Who's with me? Huh? HUH? No not you David Schwimmer, you're just ugly. --Ed.)

Two months into clinical school, I have managed to acquaint myself with nearly every personality of note (and their respective bootprints, which have all become very good friends with my ass) in Stalingrad General, and for simplicity's sake (and because I have fewer comedy ideas than Prince Philip on a really, really good day) I shall refer to them all as they appear in the following Who's Who in Stalingrad General Hospital:

Komrade Professor - Our Professor of Medicine, in charge of the integration of Oxbridge transfer students into a "proper" medical school (read: teaching us poor pre-clinical sods how to hold a stethoscope properly.) Literally looks like a tanned version of Rowan Atkinson, complete with biting wit and a glare that makes you feel like Mr Bean presenting a chest x-ray.

Komrade Konsultant - Supreme Overlord of his medical specialty, and at the direct opposite end of the hospital food chain from me. I'll use this title for whoever's in charge of teaching me at the moment (read: bossing me around a bit, pretending they care about medical training, then disappearing faster than George W. Bush's approval ratings when I approach them for teaching).

Komrade Konsultant Surgeon - The consultant surgeon in charge, whenever I have the fantastic misfortune to be on a surgical specialty instead of a medical one. A heckuva lot more scarce than the medical variety, but (as any medical student will tell you) worse than medical consultants. A lot worse. (And hey, how appropriate will this picture be when I start Respiratory Surgery?)

Komrade Klinikal Skills Tutor - THE poor bastard in charge of teaching us poor bastards how to hold a stethoscope properly. Loses hair faster than John McCain lost the election. Probably got the job in return for a foreign work permit or because he got caught stealing cookies from Komrade Professor's personal tin. Either way, I pity the man. (And so will you, once you hear what we've done to him. --Ed.)

So there we go - a small sampling of the crazy characters perpetrating the wide-screen madness that goes on daily at my clinical school. (Boy, the stories I have for you! And I haven't even introduced the nurses yet.) Stay tuned*!

*Anybody (and I mean ANYBODY) who makes the ol' tuning-fork-neurological-exam joke at this point gets to be the first subject in my clinical trial to test whether humans can feel tuning-fork vibrations in the inner rectum, okay?

Some Wounds Never Heal

2008-12-09T04:11:00.001Z

"Take it from me, son - some wounds never heal."

I stand by the side of the bed, twirling my stethoscope around my neck, trying to look competent. He stares at me with those all-knowing, penetrating blue eyes. And tired. His eyes seem so tired.

"Uhm - okay. But Mr Wilson, really, from what I can see here - you're doing really well. You've definitely pulled through."

I flip through his folder. Fluid balance, temperature, blood pressure, drug chart. Improvements everywhere. The fluid in his lungs is drying up, the scars from his bowel surgery receding nicely. Three days ago he could have been dead.

"And I don't have to tell you this, I'm sure you've read your own chart - heck, you could teach me a thing or two about what these readings means." I smile. Mr Wilson was an army surgeon. He's seen enough of the cruel realities of life, of love, loss and what it means to die for your country. And he remembers. I know he's no doddering old fool. Those eyes say it all.

He turns away. Stares out the window, at the sun setting over the London skyline. I bet he remembers what it used to look like. How many times must he have stared at the Houses of Parliament, wondering if the people inside knew how much he was sacrificing so they could keep their lives?

"Some wounds don't heal."

I blink. I don't think he's talking about the scars on his stomach.

"After a while, son...after a while, you start thinking about what really matters."

It is only then that I notice what he's been doing with his hands. The dying sun glints off the ring on his finger as he twirls it round and round.

I put back his folder and begin muttering my goodbyes, wanting to give him some privacy.

"And the worst thing is...you remember. You remember everything. And you wonder if things could've gone differently." He looks down at the ring.

"Maybe...maybe if I hadn't been so selfish...she wouldn't have left. Maybe if I'd spent more time with her. If I hadn't been away from home all the time..." His voice trails off.

I hesitate. I am only a medical student. What right do I have to offer judgment? This thin frail figure on the bed before me could easily give me a tongue-lashing for forgetting my place with patients. And he would be right. But I venture anyway.

"Mr Wilson...I doubt selfish is a word anyone would use to describe you. Ever."

He turns to me, a faint smile creasing his face. Those eyes again.

"You're kind. And I shouldn't be wasting your time with an old man's mutterings. Go home, son. It's late."

I smile back, and promise to come look in on him tomorrow. As I leave, I hear his voice again.

"Just remember - some wounds never heal. The textbooks don't tell you that." I turn around. He isn't looking at me. The ring gleams as he turns it round and round.

I shut the door behind me, leaving him to his memories. For the briefest of moments, I think he'd be happier if he had died. I wonder if that makes me a bad person.

Image: "The hole in me since the day you died", copyright Mary Molnar.

It's Cambridge Season: Good Luck!

2008-12-06T02:56:00.013Z

Me wishing good luck to all you poor masochists applying to Cambridge, Soviet-style.
Word of advice: find a psychiatrist NOW.

Sorry for the delay in updates, folks; I've been wading nipple-deep in clinical school and trying hard to survive. And in just these past few months of working in a hospital, one of the deep and profound truths of medicine has been revealed to me. Being constantly surrounded by people in pain and helping to alleviate their suffering has shown me, finally, a great secret of life that all those who walk this hallowed path of healing eventually learn:

That medical students - especially medical students who have been at a traditional stick-up-the-arse teach-them-theory-only university and therefore know nuts about clinical skills - really are the lowest, most base, most wretched form of life on the planet.

Cambridge University's stance on equipping its future doctors
(no, smartass, that is NOT a grammatical error.)

But more on that later - I'm still rubbing the latest boot-shaped bruise inflicted on me by the drug nurse this morning when I made the tactically brilliant move of interrupting her during her drug rounds. (Bonus tip for budding medical students: DON'T. Especially if said drug nurse is 6 feet tall, Samoan, and stealing a couple of Valium pills off her drug cart every few minutes. --Ed.)

Anyhoo, it's around the time of year that hundreds of candidates around the world buck up for interviews, study their pants off for Cambridge admissions tests and start making prayers/offerings/virgin sacrifices to their favourite deities; yes that's right - it's Cambridge interview season! I'd just like to wish all Cambridge applicants good luck (you poor bastards. --Ed.). I've written before on interviews and stuff - this page may help. Any questions can be shot to me at angrymedic [at] gmail [dot] com and hey, if you don't make it, you can always get the t-shirt - it's way cooler anyway. Don't panic!

Graduation Day at Cambridge University

2008-11-18T16:31:00.001Z

26th-28th June was Graduation Weekend at Cambridge University.

Getting to graduation, for me, has been one long struggle; from dodging the hardbound copies of Gray's Anatomy hurled at me by angry professors to actually passing the exams to finding the correct damn graduation gown hood with the correct damn fur lining culled from the correct damn near-extinct species of Mickey Mouse-shape-toothed Siberian tiger. (Extract from actual Graduation Day notice to students: "The Praelector will strictly enforce the dress code on graduation day for all students and you will not be allowed to graduate if, for example, your socks are the wrong colour*.")

But I made it. I made it through 3 years of getting a ego-battering every day, of trying to survive in the midst of people who were so obviously superior to me, and who often didn't like me due to my different sense of humour, my different accent, and my general weirdness. So I don't have any regrets as I look back on this place one last time before I leave it.

Cambridge taught me many things, and although I didn't agree with its education system, I can't deny that it IS very good. (If getting your head forcibly crammed with theoretical jargon by researchers who see the light of day less often than Amy Winehouse appears in public respectably and seeing patients twice a year is your idea of a good pre-clinical education, that is. --Ed.) Maybe not for me, but generally. (So says the Times, anyway. Okay, okay, I'll stop with the schizophrenic double-talk already. --Ed)

So on to clinical school! I visit Cambridge often enough that people see me more often than when I actually studied there, but it'll be great to proceed to clinical school and start finally ~~killing patients~~ uhm, making a difference in people's lives (and all that other crap you wrote in your personal statement when you applied. Don't pretend nobody knows where you got it from! --Ed)

So yeah. I'm back, folks. And if you think my adventures at clinical school are going to be any less funny-in-a-sickening-schadenfreude-way, read on and (hopefully) laugh. (Unless you live within my clinical school's NHS catchment area, of course. In which case the next time your doctor asks if it's okay if a medical student takes your blood, FOR GOD'S SAKE SAY NO. --Ed.)

*One of my classmates unfortunately forgot to read this fine print on the Graduation notice, and was told his socks were the wrong shade of black for the ceremony. Yes, you read that right; Cambridge praelectors are trained to recognise DIFFERENT FRIGGIN' SHADES OF BLACK. Luckily for him his dad wore the correct colour of socks, and he was forced to trade socks with his dad 10 minutes before the Graduation Parade.

If there's one thing I've learnt at Cambridge, it's to ALWAYS read the bloody fine print on anything. One final-year student read the rules in so much detail he found a 16th-century regulation that allowed all candidates sitting for his exam to demand one leg of roast ham and a glass of wine during the paper. Unfortunately for him he hadn't read far enough; upon asking for his food and wine in the exam hall his demands were met, but he was then fined for not wearing a sword. Guess you can't win 'em all. Still want a copy of the prospectus?

Hi Mom, Obama Won!

2008-11-05T19:06:00.008Z

(Apologies to Kanye West for the blog title. Normally I wouldn't bother, but hey, this is Kanye 'Beat-Up-My-Own-Fans' West we're talking about.)

By the time you read this, most of you will know that Barack Obama has won the US presidential election and been crowned the new President-Elect of the United States of America. You've listened to tons of talking heads on TV yap about how historic it is and interview everybody who had anything to do with the election from Obama's campaign manager to the Indonesian janitor who cleaned the toilet he last sat on during his school days in Jakarta. So I'm not gonna wax lyrical about how amazing it is.

What I will say, though, is that two years ago I read this article on how the US election process was like The Apprentice. Being a Donald Trump fan, I devoured it, and sincerely believed its prediction that Obama was just a media darling and would lose to The Establishment in the end. I'm really, really glad it was proven wrong.

I'm not having that great a time in clinical school. My classmates make me feel stupid, my senior doctors sometimes don't appreciate my keenness, and some patients just like yelling at anything that moves. But for this one day, when the news broke, it made me look up from all the blood, gore and shit (literally) and smile. And feel that there was hope for the future.

So like millions of people around the world, I'm going to take this amazing victory as an inspiration. It's time for me to change.

Out of my pajamas, I mean. I've been lazing in bed all day.

(What, you didn't think I was gonna leave you without a lame joke, did you? You DO remember whose blog you're reading, right? --Editor)

The Chronicles of Hernia, Week 1

2008-10-07T17:17:00.005+01:00

After a lengthy examination during which the medical student sees mostly the backs of the necks of the doctors in front of him --
Pond-Scum-Level Medical Student (PMS): Uhm, doctor? What's the diagnosis?
Consultant Dr Bigshot: (paying more attention to the germs in the air in front of him than to PMS) Uh, she's dying.

The crowd of doctors and nurses moves along and PMS finally gets to see the patient. In fact said patient is staring straight at him.
PMS: Ohmigod she's HUGE!
PMS freezes and realises what he's done.
Consultant Dr Bigshot: (paying more attention to the doorknob he's currently turning than to PMS) Well done.

(No, before you ask, the above medical student is not me. No, really. Honest. Whaddya mean, "yeah right"? I-- ah screw it.)

The Angry Medic Finally Gets To Medical School

2008-10-02T18:58:00.007+01:00

Finally.

After three long years of being stuck in lecture theatres, of getting minute biochemical facts that no one in the world bloody cares about (except for about three random overworked biochemists with no life and who haven't seen the outside of their labs for months) crammed into the very limited space in my head, of being sniggered at for getting questions wrong by pompous blowheads who take the sticks out of their arses once a month to have their monthly shits*, of seeing patients twice a year and staring at the floor when the old lady in front of you faints and someone shouts "Is anyone here a doctor?" --

-- after three years of all that, I am finally, FINALLY in clinical school.

And the urge to start writing again has been niggling at the back of my head like a kidney stone niggles at a ureter (hah! see? I actually know what those are now! --Ed.) Heck, even The Fake Doctor (formerly of Ah Yes Medical School) has started writing again. Unfortunately even my most loyal readers have started searching their newspaper's obituary pages for my name, so if I started writing the only people to read this for the first few months would probably be my parents, my pet cat, and the bird who drops by my window every morning to crap. But I've got too much wide-screen madness in my life not to document it so some suicidally depressed person can read it and think "Wow, my life isn't that bad after all!" Besides, if ever there was a comedy show it'd be my life, and the first episode would be titled 'My First Week In Medical School'. Which I'll talk about next post, if I can keep dodging the homicidal nurses, evilly grinning professors and angry patients that populate my hospital long enough to survive the next few days.

Happy Rosh Hashanah!

*(cos they're anal-retentive. Geddit?)

We Have Victory

2008-07-10T01:09:00.004+01:00

Hallelujah.

All those ~~bribes to the Examination Board~~ prayers must have paid off.

Okay proper post coming next week (no really. For real this time. No really really honest-to-goodness cross-my-heart-- oh you get the picture). It might even be a soppy graduation nostalgia post. Or one last rant. Any bets?

P.S. Those of you reading this who aren't brain-dead with boredom already will have noticed this isn't the post I promised in my last post. I just wanted to make sure my rear end was safely out of Cambridge before I posted it. Coming soon!

Me, Myself and Simon Baron-Cohen*

2008-04-26T22:30:00.001+01:00

Another Photoshopped picture, another step closer to a restraining order.

(To all you ~~Internet fad slaves~~ astute readers who noticed: yes, I'm doing a Lynndie on him.)

In a series of short posts updating those of you still not brain-damaged enough to actually be reading this , I'll be bringing you up to speed on my consistently hilariously miserable life, before going on hiatus and exam lockdown (as well as finally explaining why I've been so crappy at blogging and keeping up with the blogs of you lovely people who still mysteriously care enough to visit me so often). First up in any account of my daily activities is my ~~love affair OMG he's so handsome I want his babies~~ professional relationship with Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, world-famous autism expert, scion of a famous showbiz family, and unfortunately for him, my dissertation supervisor.

Just yesterday I handed in my third-year dissertation, which was on one of the theories of origin of autism and dyslexia. (Funnily enough, one of my friends remarked since I started typing this dissertation she's noticed some of the symptoms of both autism and dyslexia in ME. Maybe it's got something to do with the fact that I started typing this dissertation 36 hours before the deadline. Losing that much sleep can't be good for you. Just ask the little green fairy sitting on my shoulder. --Editor)

Seriously though, writing up that dissertation really exposed me to the scientific method on a way that the past two years here didn't. True, it was mostly a caffeine-fuelled rush accompanied by nightmares of Simon Baron-Cohen cracking a whip behind me every time I fell asleep, but researching all those articles and getting a glimpse of the mudslinging that goes on even in respectable medical journals made me appreciate the huge, sometimes ridiculous, emphasis on science here. And, of course, the amount of people out there who dedicate their lives to research, knowing full well they will never get the credit they deserve, yet plugging on out of pure curiosity and drive (Professor Baron-Cohen himself included).

Next up: Thanks to a slightly misinformed TCS reporter, I go head to head with the entire Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine! Call an ambulance, will ya?

*Ahaha seewhatIdidthere? The title of the post parodied 'Me Myself and Irene' which is a film about schizophrenia and Simon Baron-Cohen delivers lectures on schizophrenia which is funny, see? Mm? Yes? No? I can stuff what where? Oh damn you all!

The Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race 2008

2008-04-06T23:32:00.006+01:00

Those of you who are interested in such things already know that Oxford soundly thrashed Cambridge at this year's Annual Boat Race, despite having the slowest time since 1947. For those of you who weren't there, allow me to show you these snapshots of the race near the end, taken by me with my Nikon D60 Super-Duper Camera with SarcasmoLens and built-in Adobe Photoshop InstaEdit(TM):

Oxford leads Cambridge at Barnes Bridge, towards the end of the race.
The length between the two teams here has been estimated by spectators as twice the width of the African continent.

Oxford Rowers Close-up Picture:

Cambridge Rowers Close-up Picture:

Dammit. Next year, Oxford, next year... *shakes fist*

Watch This Space

2008-03-01T21:39:00.001Z

Merry Christmas and A Very Angry New Year

2007-12-24T23:23:00.001Z

Santa gets his preflight check-up

Scanning my stats, I realise that I've lost a substantial amount of my original readership, as often happens when you're the laziest blogger on the planet and stop updating for a few months (don't look at me like that okay? I had a life-changing event. Whaddya mean "No you didn't, you're just as lazy as before?" Am NOT! I'll give you proof, too. Right after *yawn* this nap... --Editor)

So to keep you reading, a taste of coming posts: Kazakhstan mourns the death of its national hero Borat! The Discworld mourns the Alzheimer's of its creator Terry Pratchett! The Island of Hot Half-Naked Amazons celebrates the return of their Sex God, the Angry Medic!*

Happy Holidays folks!

*Aha! Just checking to see if you were paying attention...one of those isn't true. I don't think the Kazakhs are really very upset. --Ed

The NHS Blog Doctor Saga: Zombie Doctors and the Revenge of the Nurses

2007-12-20T07:19:00.000Z

Zombie doctors, megalomaniac nurses - who says medicine isn't fun?

Apologies for picking up on this so late, I was off on holiday in Amsterdam. (No I did not smoke any weed, okay, and the incident with the Dutch police about the magic mushrooms, the break-in and the 70-year-old lady - well who the heck asked her to use a red light in her dressing-room window anyway?! --Editor)

I got back to blogging to find the NHS Blog Doctor saga in full swing. To summarise, Dr Crippen of NHS Blog Doctor went MIA and hasn't blogged for months (not that I'd know anything about that. Hey, why my nose getting longer? --Ed) and people started getting worried. Then some dude with the very imaginative and totally original nickname of 'Dr P' posts a comment on NHS Blog Doctor announcing Crippen's death (as detailed in my previous post), leading to the Royal Mail being overwhelmed by people posting flowers and condolences (and to me having a minor heart attack. Who is this Dr P fellow anyway? Sounds like a rapper wannabe. Someone please show him this video and let him rip his penis off wanking. --Ed)

Anyhoo, Dr C's friends the Devil, Mr Eugenides and Wat Tyler have come out to say that the doctor is indeed alive and well. Having not heard from Crippen himself though, this means the good doctor is both alive AND dead. Not having the requisite number of brain cells to comprehend this (and needing a good excuse to mess around with Photoshop) I have decided this means he is UNdead. The world's first zombie doctor blogger! (Dammit. There goes another item on my Life Ambitions list. --Ed)

Then Dr P, deciding he/she isn't done gettin' jiggy with it, posts a comment on Paul Linford's blog detailing his/her evil plot to fake Crippen's death. Wow, a rapper-wannabe AND a supervillain! Where's the Scooby Doo gang when you need them? In this comment, he/she reveals the awful truth-- he/she is a NURSE. *dum dum DUMMMM*

"I have crossed swords with the guy many times through his blog due to his supreme arrogance towards the many of us out there who do not hold, or want to hold, the title of 'doctor', yet do a generally good job of holding the NHS together."

To me, this doesn't seem odd, because ol' Dr C isn't exactly known for being the biggest supporter of nurses. And this revelation can only mean more bad publicity for nurses and more venom being thrown at them by Dr C's supporters. 'Dr P' has done for good honest nurses what Osama bin Laden has done for millions of innocent peace-loving Muslims the world over - given them one heck of a bad image.

I can understand Dr P's venom at Crippen's years of nurse-bashing though. But don't you think wishing him dead is a little extreme?

NHS Blog Doctor: A Terrible Rumour

2007-12-14T04:17:00.000Z

Sweet Lord.

I'm late in picking this up, but there's a terrible rumour on NHS Blog Doctor about Dr Crippen. He hasn't blogged since October and there's an announcement in the comments of his last post from someone claiming to be a partner at his practice.

There is no easy way to say this, but the doctor known as 'John' or 'Crippen' passed away in a road traffic accident mid-October. Although I appreciate the esteem in which many of you obviously held him, I must ask that the emails cease as of now - they are all redirected to our mail server and this is causing some difficulty.

This said, I thank all who visit here for their support of our dear, and much missed colleague.

Kind regards, Dr.P.

Someone tell me this is a sick joke, please.

Similar pleas on Cal's blog and Doctor Anonymous.

Gunpowder, Treason and Plot

2007-11-06T00:45:00.000Z

Ma homie Guy Fawkes and me - birds of a feather.

And so a year comes to pass since I last blogged about Guy Fawkes Day, which means this blog is at least a year old. (And only 57 people have passed out whilst reading it! No, before you wise-asses mention it, unreported cases do not count. If you start haemorrhaging reading this blog and do not email me within 24 hours, you don't even get to become a statistic. So there. --Editor) It's been a while since I last blogged, and a lot has been going on, involving exploding Directors of Studies, exploding exam results, and exploding parents. (But, uh, in a very GOOD way, Mom. Honest! --Ed) Anyhoo, the bottom line is, I'm still here, thanks to my extremely supportive college and my extremely supportive fellow medics.

My fellow medics rallying around me during my time of hardship, their eyes brimming pools of sympathy.

This year's our BSc year, in which we get to do almost anything we want (which I detailed in a previous post, after which many of my caring readers, concerned for my wellbeing and continued sanity, advised me to make like Forrest Gump and run the hell away from medicine --Ed) and this year I'm doing Psychology. Being the ~~arse-licking stalker~~ appreciative-of-established-scientific-genius and driven student that I am, I've managed to get Professor Simon Baron-Cohen to supervise my dissertation. For those of you who don't recognise the name (and who haven't read my ~~arse-licking stalker~~ rather positive posts about him) Professor Baron-Cohen is the cousin of Sacha Baron-Cohen, the actor behind Ali G and Borat. More importantly, he's a world expert on autism and the only lecturer whose work didn't feel like work to me last year.

You can see where this is going, can't you?

Ignore the hot female on the cover. She's only there because, well, this is the Daily Mail.

P.S. Well, that is if my scarily-named blog stalkers don't get to me first, of course.

How It Feels To Be The Angry Medic

2007-09-30T03:58:00.001+01:00

She Did NOT Just Say That!

2007-09-15T10:14:00.000+01:00

Running through my notes, I was reminded of a few quotes by our last Pathology lecturer for the year, who had a reputation for dropping quotes like a B-52 over Kabul. Seeing the popularity of this old post, whose aftermath (I believe) included a coma, a divorce, and a great reduction in applications to Cambridge, I decided to share some of this wisdom so that you, too, can be inspired, be awakened, and throw that med school prospectus the hell away already.

"I will tolerate no phones ringing. If you have your cell phone, please, give yourselves a cheap thrill and set it to vibrate." -- beginning her first lecture.

"Some of you may have heard from less-than-pleased ex-students of mine that Professor Stanley is obsessed with sex.

*pause for effect*

This is true."
-- introduction to her first lecture (Tumour Biology of all things. But she did describe the reproduction of her lab mice in excruciating projectile-vomit-causing detail.)

"Hypertrophy is a response to excessive or prolonged demand, such as in the pregnant uterus - they don't call it labour for nothing."

"Semen is a most dangerous substance. Always avoid it at all costs. Research has shown that it gives you the biggest tumour of all - pregnancy." -- explaining how squamous metaplasia is caused in the uterus.

"Some of these names are very old - we've used them since pussy was a cat." -- introducing the terms 'melanoma' and 'seminoma'.

"Normal tissue is ordered and structured, like the dancers in Strictly Come Dancing. Cancerous tissue, then, is like the Strictly Come Dancing afterparty." -- quite self-explanatory really

"Bitter experience has taught me that 80% of this lecture theatre will not know what 'faecal' means, and that I must use language appropriate to your generation - this, ladies and gentlemen, is shit."

And they say med school lecturers are boring.

Angry Medic Execution Countdown Update! Well, it's exam weekend again, and I'm terrified to the point of wearing adult diapers. It's kinda all on the line this time. But hey, on Friday I'll be home free and able to update again, despite the fact that my fate hangs in the balance and will be announced the week after. So for all you people out there whom I haven't pissed off yet (yes, I'm talking to all three of you) now would be a good time to cross your fingers/say a prayer/sacrifice a virgin princess on my behalf.

Thanks, and see you all soon! (If you don't hear from me, though, send the police here. I'll be in my Darth Vader costume, so whoever finds me first gets it!)

Teacher, Doctor, Soldier, Spy

2007-08-06T18:58:00.000+01:00

Forgive the long break between posts; between trying to drag the separate pieces of my life together like a farmer dragging obstinate mules by their tails and getting nothing but a lesson in mule butt anatomy (ass holes. AHAHA geddit? --Editor), I have also been giving Cambridge Access talks around the country and trying very hard not to scream "RUN FOLKS RUN!" at these poor masochists applying to Cambridge.

No doubt many of you have realised by now that the good Dr Crippen of NHS Blog Doctor has taken a leaf out of my book and taken a leaf of absence (leaf = leave. AHAHA geddit? I'm on a roll! --Ed) for a while, leaving the BritMeds in the capable if profanity-smeared hands of Dr Rant. They've been kind enough to put my reader-enforced comeback in their inaugural BritMeds. Go take a look and find out why the most popular search term leading to my blog is now 'Megan Fox'. Not that I'm complaining...people always did say I had a great body.

Also, my new post on Medscape discusses academic medicine and the attitudes towards it in different places. No, it's not another rant about how much I hate the academic slant at Cambridge. (Okay, so maybe just a little.) Go check it out and learn how you can pass on all the abuse poured on you in medical school and by your parents in childhood.

(Disclaimer: The above bad humour, crappy graphics and lack of quick response to comments posted below are all results of the flu I've got clogging up my nose. Well, that and the voices in my head, of course. They're getting louder these days and arguing with each other. Maybe I should tell my therapist about them sometime. --Ed)

Sex, Lies and Exams! The Angry Medic Tells All

2007-07-29T16:50:00.000+01:00

Sheesh. You take a break from blogging and try and go into seclusion to set things right with your life, and what happens?

Why, your readers form an angry mob and drag you right back, of course.

But yeah. In a nutshell: I messed up, didn't do as well in my exams as I should have, and am now suffering from guilt. Which is why I've been as easy to find in the blogosphere as cellulite on Megan Fox's stomach. (The chick from Transformers, for those of you who a) are female, or b) are males with testicular deformations. --Editor)

I've spent several posts over on Medscape ranting on about passion, so much so that comments have ranged from a polite 'Um, why don't you write about something else for a bit?' to 'Stop whining, retard. Don't you have rectal exams to do?' But I worked hard, very hard at times, to get into med school, and when I got in I stopped and became what my tutors would diplomatically call "a lazy git". Which is why I was left wondering where all the passion went, where all the discipline went. (Not that I had much to begin with - remember I got into Cambridge on the strength of my eyelashes. Dangit. Now I wish I'd taken my mother's advice and become an eyelash extension model. --Ed)

To cut a long story short, I told my tutors, got a few textbooks thrown at me, got a few more whip scars on my arse (and some wheelchair tracks - one of my professors is kinda old. Don't ask. --Ed) and am on my way to fixing things. Which basically means that for the duration of the summer I have to SuperGlue my arse to my seat and study as if Dr Miranda Bailey herself was behind me holding a whip.

Thanks for the lovely words of encouragement to those of you who left some. They restore my faith in humanity. No that is NOT a tear in my eye. That's just, um, pencil fumes. Yeah.

Fear And Self-Loathing In Las Cambridge

2007-06-16T15:37:00.001+01:00

Once a year, something very strange happens in Cambridge.

Cambridge. Hallowed centre for intellectual development. Home to some of the world's most serious and diligent scientific minds. Birthplace of discoveries and developments that change the way humanity views life, the world, and itself.

And yet, once a year in this place, all the effort, all the stress and toil, all the blood, sweat and tears of the entire year come boiling to the surface in one short rush.

And people start to go a little crazy.

Every year scores of Cambridge students, leaders of tomorrow, example students and first-class successes, will make a mass exodus to such landmarks as the Bridge of Sighs and the Mathematical Bridge, pause slightly, allowing the tourists to get their cameras up, take a lucky swig from the bottle in their hands, and voluntarily throw themselves off the bridge into the waters of the River Cam.

Ah yes, May Week in Cambridge.

On the other side of the University, a different sort of madness is taking place. Centred mostly around Senate House, this sort of madness involves crowds of students with fearful glances staring at notice boards, gabbing excitedly into phones, yelling and screaming and hugging bewildered Japanese tourists at random, or breaking down into sobs and beating up themselves/their friends/proctors standing unfortunately nearby/bewildered Japanese tourists.

Yes, it's exam result season in Cambridge.

I, unfortunately, have not done nearly as well as I should have. Whilst it's not end-of-the-world bad, it's bad enough to warrant a short hiatus from blogging. Posts will be slow, and whilst I'm sure no one's going to miss me, I just thought I'd pop a note to make sure no one thought I was sitting in my room being emo and sobbing my eyes out over Dr Burke not being on Grey's Anatomy anymore. Angry medics don't cry! Angry medics don't have tear ducts!

*loud wail "WHY, DR BURKE, WHY?!" in background*

Uhm. That wasn't me.

In Memoriam: Dr Preston Burke

2007-06-09T22:09:00.000+01:00

You probably have heard by now, but ABC Networks has confirmed that actor Isaiah Washington, who plays Dr Preston Burke on the hit TV show Grey's Anatomy, has been let go. He will probably not be reappearing, even for brief cameos.

This means that, to all ends and purposes, Dr Preston Burke is gone. For good.

This may sound shallow, but this loss comes as a great blow to me. To me, Preston Burke was more than just a fictional character on a TV show. To me, he was an inspiration. His exacting standards, devotion to his art, professionalism, and compassion for his patients embodied, to me, the perfect surgeon. When he revealed to Cristina that the secret to his genius was not being the smartest in med school, but being the hardest-working, he inspired hundreds of thousands of medical students and viewers across the globe. Indeed, I imagined surgeons like Sid Schwab of Surgeonsblog, Harvard surgeon and writer Atul Gawande, and HospitalPhoenix to be like him. Tough. Exacting. Precise. Obsessive. But also filled with compassion and genuine concern for both his patients and his students.

I know Isaiah Washington the actor may not be the wisest of men when it comes to keeping his mouth shut. And I detest discrimination of any sort. But Preston Burke the character was an integral part of the drama, storyline, and cultural diversity of Grey's Anatomy. And he was a hero of mine. He inspired me to keep going, to keep looking higher, and to make myself better. In an imperfect world, he showed me, and crowds of fans worldwide, that there was nothing wrong with striving for perfection.

He will be missed.

Hangin' Loose

2007-06-08T15:05:00.000+01:00

FREE! Free as a bird, freefreeFREE BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA--

--at least until Wednesday, when I find out how many papers I've failed and kiss my summer goodbye so I can study for the resits.

Dangit.

In the meantime, I'm still sitting around in a state of semi-numbness. The exams are over. I slept 3 hours a night all of last week, and at the end of it all we emerged from the exam hall looking like this:

Second-year medicine is widely reputed to be the toughest year in all Cambridge. Maybe not the toughest course (to get a First Class in Maths you have to prove Fermat's Last Theorem or revive Schrodinger's Cat or something insane like that) but definitely the toughest year. And it's HELL going into it unprepared, especially when it drags on for six days of the week, and you happen to be a lazy bum who's spent more time during the year blogging than doing any actual revision and have to stay up revising till it's bright outside and passing birds laugh at you for having to stay up cramming so late.

I've written two entries on Medscape, including one on the ever-interesting subject of Post-Exam Personalities. You know, the weird social hierarchy that you see when you come out of the exam hall: in one corner you'll have the Nerds and the Hypertalkers laughing about how easy it was and how they BLATANTLY scored the bonus half-mark by quoting the alternative name for the radial groove, in another corner you have the Pedants beating their hands against the wall in agony at forgetting to write down the trade names, old names and early names for frusemide and ciprofloxacin, then you have the larger crowd of Sane Medics who're just glad that it's over, and of course in the distance you can just see the quickly receding silhouettes of the underprepared Lazy-Ass Slackers through the dust clouds they kick up as they rush back to start cramming for the next exam (yours truly is, unfortunately, in this category).

What kind of post-exam person are you? Do pop over and leave a comment. In the meantime, I'm sitting here contemplating another crucial life-and-death balance-of-universe-affecting question:

Grey's Anatomy, House and Scrubs have all ended for the summer.

WHAT THE HELL AM I GOING TO DO?!

Epiphany

2007-06-03T04:16:00.000+01:00

A strange thing happened to me this week.

Late one night, as I was desperately trying to finish cramming and get at least 3 hours of sleep before the next day's exam, as dawn was breaking and the birds started singing in Chapel Court outside, I decided, screw it, I'm reading Simon Baron-Cohen's lectures, and hoping an essay question comes out from there.

And as I sat there, reading the great man's work, for the first time in all the long years of study it took to get here--

--it didn't feel like work.

In fact, I even got carried away.

I NEVER get carried away reading medical lectures.

I wonder what that means.

Angry Medic Go Bye-Bye

2007-05-20T02:38:00.000+01:00

Ever get the feeling your life's one big long card game? (Or an episode of a soap opera, for you sad non-geeks who never played Magic: The Gathering and who wasted your lives actually having, you know, a life. --Editor)

Well above is the card that every second-year med student in Cambridge is playing right now. We're one week away from exams, and as I desperately try to cram as many waking hours as possible into studying and re-read the comments that you kind souls posted under the previous two posts for encouragement (yes, I have the discipline of a retarded sloth on LSD. I was knocked on the head as a child, okay? --Ed), I came across some comments saying basically the same thing, ranging from "I think you should maybe stop blogging for a while" to "Get off the Net and do some work, idiot!"

After taking this advice to heart (and after reading the threatening email our tutor sent us that resembled this picture somewhat:

Don't ask me why I have boobs and a dress, okay. I, uhm, like to do that sometimes.) I have decided to put this blog into hiatus for a bit. At least until after my exams, which start on Saturday the 26th (yes, Saturday exams. Don't you just love medical school? --Ed) and end in the second week of June. In the meantime, I'll be haunting all your blogs instead, so get ready for a LOT of crappy last-minute-revision-induced jokes (HAH! And you thought me going away for a couple of weeks was finally going to cure some of the brain damage I caused. --Ed) so please do refrain from sending me hate mail if I'm a little slow in adding your blog to my sidebar or replying your emails.

Good luck for all of you having exams, and I'll see you on the other side!

P.S. And if you miss me too much, contractual obligations mean I'll still be writing for Medscape, though considering it's exam season and I'm crazier than I usually am, some of my entries will be projectile-vomit-inducing. There, that counts as a health warning. Aren't I nice? :)

The Angry Medic's Guide To Third Year (a.k.a. Tell Me What The Hell To Do With The Rest Of My Life)

2007-05-16T01:28:00.000+01:00

After the huge embarrassment that was my previous post, which had the double effect of reassuring me that yes, there are still some good caring people in the world, as well as confirming to the rest of said world that I am currently in the middle of male menopause, I've decided to make good on my promise of audience participation, because I care about all your views and am such a nice guy that I take time out of my busy study schedule to make you laugh with more tales about how shit my life really is.

(Well. That, and the fact that I have NO FREAKIN' CLUE what to do next year. --Editor)

To prove my point, I asked my Director of Studies why he hasn't replied my emails yet. It turns out that he never received any of them, thanks to a combination of an extremely efficient and paranoid email filter program, and the pure bad luck of my university email address containing the letters A, S and S. In that order. (Yes. Uh. Those are my initials. Don't ask. --Editor)

So, some background information! *opens University prospectus* At Cambridge, medics in our third year have the option of choosing any subject out of a range of choices in the Natural Sciences course, or transferring to another subject entirely. Completion of this course leads to a B.A. degree, and-- what's that? You're asleep already? Okay then, in short, I need to choose a subject for next year so I can stop learning about itty-bitty little molecules and how they make love with each other in some enzyme's Protein Groove Of Luuurve, and actually learn how to be a real-life doctor.

So why can't I do this by myself? Well, it has to do with the fact that at this point my brain is so full of drug names that I have the decision-making capacity of Britney Spears in a hair salon. Plus the option list looks like this:

For ease and clarity (and so I can procrastinate some more --Ed) I will use famous people (and one famous place) to associate with each option I'm considering. See if you can match them up before we're done. Ready? Here's the list of options:

1. Pathology
2. Pharmacology
3. Experimental Psychology
4. History and Philosophy of Science
5. Law

and here's the list of famous people (and one place):

1. Forrest Gump
2. Haley Joel Osment
3. Courtney Love
4. Lindsay Lohan
5. New Orleans, Louisiana

Right. Let's start with Pathology. Cells, both living and dead, and the diseases they cause. I'm leaning towards this because one of the pathology courses is really clinical, and I wanna learn what to do if, oh I don't know, someone fainted in a roomful of Cambridge medics? Plus I find it really fun, and Pathologists Anonymous is one of my favourite blogs. This one was easy: Haley Joel Osment.

Next up, Pharmacology! Lots and lots of drugs and their mechanisms. Pros: It's interesting, and clinically relevant as doctors use drugs. Cons: You're not sure what use it has in real life, and there's lots of drugs involved. Kinda like Lindsay Lohan.

Experimental Psychology is fun. Besides getting more lectures from Borat's cousin Simon Baron-Cohen, I like poking around in people's heads and learning how we think. My parents also support me taking this option, because they hope that one day I'll learn enough to be able to cure my own mental retardation. The cons: It's all mental. Like Courtney Love.

History and Philosophy of Science: Ahhh, the honeymoon. Incorporated into the course to accommodate the many medics who accumulate so much mental damage from the first 2 years that they need some time out, this is a mostly theoretical option with no practicals and lots of off-time. Answer: New Orleans. (The Big Easy. Geddit? AHAHAHA how witty am I? Hire me now, Comedy Central! --Ed)

And finally, the Big Opt-Out: Law. We're also allowed to do non-medical subjects, and some medics take a 2-year conversion course to law. You get to go back to medicine after 2 years, of course, and graduate eventually with 2 degrees, but the main thing for me is that it means I can escape medicine for a coupla years. Or, as one medic-turned-lawyer put it to me: "RUN FORREST RUN!"

So there ya have it. How'd you score? But more importantly:

What would YOU choose?

P.S. A very sincere thank you to all of you who left comments and advice on my previous post. It was heartwarming to know that so many people cared, and that there are some good people in the world. No, that's NOT a tear in my eye, okay? It's just, uh, a splinter of wood from my last bout of banging my head against the table in despair. I find it therapeutic.

Angry

2007-05-12T17:04:00.000+01:00

I hate what I am.

I'm 2 weeks away from exams. I should know all my material cold by now. At the beginning of last year I told myself that I would. That I wouldn't make mistakes. That I wouldn't fall into the trap every lazy student falls into before exams.

And yet here I am. Mediocre. Ordinary.

Lazy.

In Michaelmas I caught up with my Director of Studies as he was leaving College one late evening. He told me that when he looked at my application form two years ago, he said to himself, "This is a guy I want." He had handpicked me out of all those applications. Because he put his trust in me. He believed in me. That I wouldn't let the College down.

Now he doesn't even reply my emails anymore.

Can you imagine how painful it is knowing that you've let someone like that down?

I probably won't even make it into clinical school at Cambridge. I'll probably be kicked out to some school in London. And that makes me angry. Not about London. In fact I believe that clinical schools in London run a better course than the one here at Addenbrookes. It's the fact that I'll be KICKED OUT.

I should be hardworking. I should be one of those medics who sleeps 5 hours a night, who sleeps alternate nights, who made flashcards months ago and by now has finished revising everything and is just working through past-year papers. The kind with Grey's Anatomy -like zeal. With an aggressive surgical streak. Because they're ALL AROUND ME. Sure, they come in with sleepy smiles and say "Mate, I'm so screwed, I've done no work at all, I can't remember anything", blah de blah de bloody blah. But you know it's all bullshit. That it's about as believable as a cow standing up on two hind legs and telling you it's the Queen of England. Or Paris Hilton saying she's sorry and she won't do it again.

But no. Instead here I am, having slept for 7 hours when I intended to pull an all-nighter. Snoozing around when countless good, honest people laboured to get me here, me being a kid from exactly the wrong kind of background to get into Cambridge. A Type B medical student in the world capital of Type A students. A dolphin in a sea of sharks.

And I hate it.

Love Is In The Air

2007-05-10T01:16:00.000+01:00

Jagshemash! Today I have big announcement to make. You remember my last post about being stalked in Cambridge by fellow bloggers Little Medic and MissBliss. (Actually they is after my pubis but I cannot tell you that. Kazakhstani pubis very valuable. --Editorsky) They now have big news to tell world -- THEY IS GETTING ENGAGED! Yes, Little Medic came to Cambridge, and on romantic bridge, he get down on one knee, and he buy his wife. Here I am with happy couple:

(Why you think he call himself Little Medic?)

I very happy for them! In fact I left comment at Little Medic's blog, offering them wedding present:

Wa-wa-wee-wa! I knew it! I suspected as much! You be very happy! You come stay my house in Kazakhstan, I give you free donkey-ride around my village! We tie 'Just Engaged' notice to back of your ass*!

Heh. CONGRATS!

*the donkey, not your backside. Please do not be perverteds.

I was planning to give them free ride around village, like in my picture here. Kazakhstani women very strong on plough, and after pubis harvest, many of them work part-time to pull wedding carriages. Is very suitable for newlyweds!

You go to Little Medic's blog and wish him congrats, and for full story and gossip you go to his fiancee's blog.

Borat Week At Cambridge Medical School

2007-05-08T14:42:00.000+01:00

To my millions of faithful readers (and by that I mean two readers; three if you include the blind guy I gave my blog address to on the way to lectures; three-and-a-half if you include his seeing dog!) who have been waiting in suspense for an explanation of the new banner (and those of you who've sworn off coming here for the next week because you think it's simply an excuse for me to make more horrible Borat jokes** and procrastinate more; have a little faith, will ya? Of course I've got a reason for this. In addition to those two. --Editor) I do actually have a proper reason for the new look. (Well. Okay, I'm using a very loose definition of 'proper' here, but still. --Ed)

This week has unofficially been dubbed Borat Week at Cambridge by students doing Experimental Psychology. Why? Because we get lectures from Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, who sadly is less recognised for the fact that he is a world expert on autism than he is for the fact that he is also a first cousin of Sacha Baron-Cohen, the comic genius behind such creations as Ali G and Borat (picture links not suitable for children. Or mental health, for that matter. --Ed)

So it was that I stepped into my first Exp Psych lecture with the great man, expecting, perhaps a little unrealistically, to be greeted with a scene like this:

Don't ask me why my head is turned 180 degrees backwards. Angry Medics have, uh, very flexible neck muscles. (And the ability to read your mind. Whaddya mean I have crap Photoshop skills, huh?! Well -- well, uh -- well so's your mom! Hah! --Editor)

But instead of giving us great one-liners or doing comedy shtick, Professor Baron-Cohen turned out instead to be one of those quietly inspiring teachers. Even when I went up to ask him a question, he had absolutely no airs at all and treated me like any other person. Despite his star quality lent to him by his more famous cousin and by his own achievements, he remains humble and had that characteristic soft-spokennness I've seen in so many good doctors who work with children (like the consultant in this video from the MTAS March).

But wait! I'll still be keeping up the Borat theme throughout this week (Why? Because. --Ed) and just to reward you for risking mental damage and coming here, I'm going to put up a series of audience participation posts so you can help me make some important academic decisions (Why? Because. --Ed). So stay tuned, and help me procrastinate.

**In response to this post by Cal of Short White Coats, where she voiced her fears about failing her EMQs (such a modest dear, isn't she?), I posted, for lack of anything else to say (hmm now I wonder why? Oh yes, that's because we at Cambridge DON'T GET EMQs for THREE YEARS. Or anything else remotely clinical, for that matter --Ed), a mindless Borat comment:

*in thick Borat accent* I is jealous of you! In Kazakhstan we do notta haf money to pay actors, so de doctor, he bash us in stomach wit crowbar, and when we haf different symptoms we diagnose each other. Self-diagnosis save money. Great success!

I'm witty, right? Right? How am I not getting paid for this, right? Right? HELLO?

Dangit. I really need to get some insecticide for these damn crickets.

Jack And The Been-Stalked

2007-05-06T13:00:00.000+01:00

I've been stalked!

In an incident eerily reminiscent of the NurseQuack one in this post, I was checking my pigeonhole today when I found a card had been left for me by the porters. It had this on the cover:

And when I opened it, I found this:

True to the general turn of events in my life, the supermodel who was sitting in the pigeonhole room when I got this card (and was, like, TOTALLY checking me out --Editor) is now sitting happily on my List Of People I Have Freaked Out And Who Will Become Intensely Interested In Their Own Navels When I Pass By.

But I'm not the only one who'd have been freaked out by something like that happening to them, right? Right? Hello? Hey, are those crickets chirping? We don't have crickets in Camb--what the. Is that TUMBLEWEED?

P.S. I think I know who the wise guys are :)

There And Back Again

2007-05-03T21:59:00.000+01:00

I had a dream last night.

In it, I had finally, finally, FINALLY finished medical school. It is the future. Everything looks like the future Cambridge in that Star Trek episode (pictured), DeLoreans whizzing in the skies and all. But due to budget constraints and increasingly pissy dons, the University is entirely run by robots now (with the Vice-Chancellor bearing an eerie resemblance to Futurama's 'Mom'). I am happy to finally, after what seems like gazillions of years (and probably is), graduate. But when I click on the University's Online Graduation System to receive my Virtual Diploma(TM)**, this suddenly pops up:

I'M GOING TO FAIL MY EXAMS!

Anyhoo, recently two medical bloggers gave the blogosphere a scare when they decided to quit blogging in favour of, you know, having lives. (Ah, the good ol' days, back when we had lives...What's that you say? You still HAVE lives? Oh. --Editor) Everyone's favourite underdog surgeon HospitalPhoenix has left the blogosphere after a troll attacked him on his blog (and I'm not talking about the kind you find in Hogwart's toilets --Ed) and thought-provoking med student writer MedStudentGod of Creating The Godcomplex also decided to call it quits.

Then, in the last week, both of them dropped comments here. I sensed the dam cracking--

--and now they've both returned to the blogosphere. MedStudentGod realised that the rants were building up in him, and Phoenix just had to show off his new 'The Golden Compass' daemon. (So he got a lion. Big deal. I would've gotten a lion too, just that I, uh, slipped when holding the mouse and ended up with a, well, mouse. But I'm actually a lion. Yep. No, really. Dammit, why is my nose growing? That chemist Geppetto SAID this cream'd stop it growing!--Ed)

I guess we all get the impulse to stop blogging at times (if you don't blog, good for you. You've prolly got a life --Ed) but I maintain that the life of a medic contains too much widescreen madness not to write about. It's why I keep blogging, despite great incentive to stop (mostly in the form of my Director of Studies screaming at me "Are you still writing that stupid blog, dumbass? You're THREE FRIGGIN' WEEKS from exams and you're blogging?!" right before I get hit in the face with a Pathology textbook. --Ed).

**First-Class graduates get a Complimentary Online Handshake from the Vice-Chancellor -- you put your hand on your mouse and it vibrates for TEN WHOLE SECONDS. Some even say the Vice-Chancellor herself presses the button on the other end. A senior who graduated with a first class once actually let me touch his mouse -- it was the most motivating thing in the world. Felt a bit sticky, though, and when I asked him why, he turned red and mumbled something about the weather. Weirdo.

My Date With Patsy

2007-04-30T22:58:00.000+01:00

Remember that Experimental Psychology practical I told you about in my last post? Well today we turned up at class, and lying on the table in front of me was this handout:

This, of course, refers to PATSy, the patient simulator website that UK medical students are no doubt familiar with. We at Cambridge, however, are a bit slow in our training (and by slow I mean THREE FRIGGIN' YEARS without learning what to do when someone faints cold in the middle of a roomful of medics with about fifty first-aid kits lying around rusting happily --Editor) and so this was my first exposure to this wonderfully-named resource.

And so by the time the professor interrupted his opening lecture to scream at me "What the hell is so funny, wisearse?!" I had already been sniggering insanely in the front row for about ten minutes.

What's the first thing YOU would've thought of upon reading something like that?

Cartoon adapted from one by Jerry King, who oddly enough was also a medic.

Actually, I'm In Between Posts Right Now

2007-04-29T14:04:00.000+01:00

(The Cambridge Anatomy Department is recruiting and I thought I'd help them out.)

Anyhoo, I've been mulling over a post for a long time now, and it's coming up as soon as I finish the endless stream of mock exams that should hopefully end on Monday (after which we have an endless stream of practicals. Experimental Psychology practicals. What the hell are those about anyway? To test if we're sane? Crap, I'm finally going to be found out. Well if they expel me, I'm going to sue. "Sanity" was definitely NOT on the admissions requirements list in the prospectus. --Editor) but I thought I'd give you some background reading to do first.

This issue is a universal one that affects all of us, because all of us question whether we're really doing what we want to be doing in life. Three links:

1. I sat down and wrote a post for Medscape on it. The volume of comments surprised me (and made me really REALLY glad I'm not the only one feeling that way! --Ed) and has passed 60. Do go read it and do leave a comment here or there. I'd really like to hear your thoughts on this one.

2. Nathan of A Jolly Company expresses it better than I do in his article on the famous physician Sir William Osler. Take a look at the comments too, especially the first one by a 'Tinea' and the last one by Medstudentitis.

3. And saving the last for best, this post over at one of the best medical blogs out there, a blog that has inspired countless other bloggers, medical or otherwise, but has reached such a pinnacle that its author doesn't update as frequently anymore and no longer replies to comments: Ah Yes Medical School. Best summarised in the words of one commenter over there: "Really good, blah, blah, blah."

And just because you've all been so good and read this far without falling asleep or haemorrhaging out of your ears, I'll include a bonus link: Donald Trump's first rule is also about passion.

Passion, passion, passion. Starting to see a pattern here?

An Epiphany In King's College Chapel (a.k.a. OMG I Met A Celebrity OMG!)

2007-04-27T17:10:00.000+01:00

King's College Chapel. The most famous icon of Cambridge and one of the world's most recognisable landmarks, it costs the college £1000 a day to operate and is home to one of the country's most famous choirs, King's Voices, which sings regularly for the BBC. It is also a haven for the devout, no matter what religion they come from or if they believe in God at all, to rest, pray and quietly reflect under its soaring arches and grand windows.

And, today, also a place for one gushing medic with a bad case of starstruck-itis.

I was leading a group of people through King's College Chapel when I bumped into Margaret Mountford, Sir Alan Sugar's aide on the British version of The Apprentice (the equivalent of Carolyn and now Ivanka Trump on the American version).

*GIGGLY SCHOOLGIRL WARNING*

Oh. My. Gawd. I gushed and I gushed. I don't know what I did, but somewhere in between I managed to shake her hand, grabbed a picture, and had this exchange:

Margaret: So what do you read here at Cambridge?

Me: OMG OMG OMG uhm like you know like medicine.

She looked at me, gave me this sympathetic look, and disappeared into the crowd.

OMG OMG I JUST MET MARGARET MOUNTFORD!

*end Giggly Schoolgirl Warning*

Back in my room, in between rubbing ointment on my forehead for the bruises caused by repeatedly smashing my head into my table for not being more composed and asking her some coherent questions (like "What career advice do you have for a young medic?" or "Tell me I'm fired! TELL ME I'M FIRED!"), I couldn't help but think that maybe meeting her in King's College Chapel was some sort of sign. But of what? That my future lies in television? That I should take the lessons I learnt from The Apprentice and apply them to medicine? That I should get a sex-change operation and go make really good friends with Alan Sugar's or Donald Trump's children?

I feel another post coming up.

Sigh. I bet many of you have met celebrities, perhaps just last weekend at the Spider-Man 3 premiere in London. (Yes, Little Medic, I know you've seen Stephen Hawking and I haven't. Yay.) I also bet you didn't react as stupidly as I have. Drop me a line if you want to gush. (Unless you've met Donald Trump. In which case, I will hunt you down and kill you out of jealousy.)

Student Season Open!

2007-04-27T02:35:00.000+01:00

It's the beginning of term!

All across Cambridge, library space is at a premium. Lines form outside libraries as angry nerds clutching piles of textbooks glare at the slow-walking porter (whom I suspect walks even slower just for kicks) ambling to the library door to unlock it before deftly leaping to one side to avoid being crushed underfoot by a mob that would make a Boxing Day Sales crowd blush.

Lectures started today officially (term in Cambridge starts on a Thursday, thanks to an obscure rule in a rulebook somewhere written by an ancient Cambridge don with a sense of humour and too much free time --Editor) but of course, knowing my luck, I had one scheduled yesterday. Halfway through the Psychology lecture, which was on how babies think, those of us left with consciousness levels higher than the average heroin addict managed to catch this particular exchange:

Professor: ...and so for a long time it was questioned whether infants integrated visible parts into wholes.

And then, from the back row of the class, barely a whisper but still very audible:

"You can integrate MY visible part into your whole anytime, baby."

That woke us up.

Don't Wake Me Up

2007-04-22T19:19:00.000+01:00

"Have you ever been, completely and utterly, destroyed?

Have you ever suffered so grievous a wound, so deep a pain, that the very act of living is excruciatingly painful? That it went straight to the core of who you are, and changed, for you, what it meant to live? To be human?

I loved her. And what's better, she loved me. My first love. And the universe was fair. The world was beautiful. For all its sham, drudgery, suffering and broken dreams, it was beautiful. I could live through anything that happened, because there was someone by my side. Someone to share everything with. Someone you knew would be there for you to rush to no matter what happened. Someone to face the world with. Your own little corner of God's great universe wasn't so small and lonely anymore.

And whilst it lasted, it lasted beautifully. You'd walk in the park, and see all these couples holding hands, and you'd smile. You'd pass a corner cafe, and see young lovebirds gazing into each other's eyes and laughing, and you'd smile. You'd pass billboards in the street advertising the latest romantic blockbuster, and you'd smile. Because you had someone to watch it with. You had someone to take walks in the park with. You had someone to sit down and laugh with, to pick up from work, to take to dinner, to fight with, to cry with. You had SOMEONE. Someone who fit you. Someone who completed you.

And you could understand how the world kept going on, despite all its tragedies, injustices and sins. Because people were still in love with each other.

And then it happens. Things grow old and die. Nothing lasts forever. All happiness fades away eventually. The bright days grow dark, the black clouds cover the sun, trees shed their leaves and grow bare.

Suddenly, she's gone.

And you're left alone to face it. No explanations. No one to answer your questions. You're lying on the ground, gasping in pain, trying to comprehend the blind horror of it all. You're reaching out for help, you turn to everyone you knew, asking for some sympathy, some support; you don't feel like living anymore, and you've lost the fear of death. In fact, you think it might be better off to die; to float up, far far away, and return to the arms of the Creator. Whatever supreme being is up there waiting at the end of this journey, He might have some answers. And comfort. Some soothing relief from this blinding pain.

Because no one else can offer you any. Everyone around you is wondering why you're so weak. Why you can't be a man and deal with it. Why you're wasting their time telling anyone who'll listen how painful it is. Everybody breaks up, and they're still walking around. What's wrong with you? The world is full of tales of broken love. Everyone's got a tragedy. Take it like a man and get on with it.

So you keep it inside. You walk around with this deep, searing wound within you, a pain that goes so far down into your core that it's become part of who you are, and you plaster a smile on your face and pretend that everything's okay. You walk through the park, you walk past cafes, you walk under billboards, and you pretend you don't see anything."

He sighs and fidgets with the IV line in his arm. For a long time he stares at his own feet, making impressions in the hospital blanket.

I sit there looking at him. I do not speak. The Patient Interview handbook stays clutched in my hand, forgotten.

After a while he perks up. "But last night she came back to me." He smiles.

"Last night I dreamt of her. She was standing in a field. She'd hurt her foot. I bent down to help her, and she kneeled. I teased her for being a klutz. She always was. She laughed, and I smiled. I felt happy for the first time in years. I wanted to tell her how sorry I was, how much I loved her--"

He stops. A single small tear rolls down his cheek. His expression hardens, but he continues staring into space.

"And then he woke me up."

And he looks up for the first time, staring at the nurse standing a few beds away. His expression contorts into one of pure rage. But he does not say anything. He knows the nurse is innocent. But he needs somewhere to pour his anger and his heartbreak. In this cold world of unfeeling, uncaring people, he needs somewhere to vent.

He turns to look at me. The moment of rage is gone. "You're young. You of all people should know how it feels to have a really good dream interrupted."

I try and smile. I am no stranger to pain. I know what he must have gone through. This man, this former drill sergeant, who fought in some of the worst wars of our time, who has seen men die under a hail of bullets, comforted grieving widows and suddenly fatherless children, this man knows pain.

The sound of chairs being drawn back makes me look around. The other medics have finished their interviews and are leaving the ward. I turn back to him, unsure of how to make a gracious exit.

But he smiles. "Go, young man. The best of luck to you."

A week later, he is gone. I find out from a patient follow-up meeting. He went peacefully, in his sleep. The night before he died, his condition had worsened. His last instruction was "Don't wake me up".

I find myself feeling glad. I do not know if that makes me a horrible person.

Picture credit: 'Outline of a Love Lost' from abstrusezincate

Anistreplase THIS

2007-04-20T14:20:00.000+01:00

Voice In My Head (That Sounds Suspiciously Like My Pharmacology Supervisor): Okay, dumbass, what's anistreplase?

Me: Pfft that's easy. Thrombolytic drug.

Voice In My Head: And what does it DO?

Me: Uhm...prevents blood from clotting.

Voice In My Head: And what is it made of?

Me: That's ridiculous. That's not gonna be on the exam!

Voice In My Head: Oh yes it is.

Me: No it's not.

Voice In My Head: Yes it IS, dumbass. Look at last year's paper, Subsection 2 Question 53a.*

Me: WHAT? They can't ask THAT! That's obscure to the point of being retarded!

Voice In My Head: YOU'RE the retard, retard. No coffee break for you. Now what's anistreplase made of?

This is nuts, you know.

*question number changed for privacy. Exam papers have feelings too.

AngryMedic.com Launched!

2007-04-18T16:13:00.000+01:00

I know I haven't been updating in a while, but I've been busy revising for next week's mock Pharm exam (okay, so maybe I've also interspersed it with 12-hour breaks to play Star Wars: Empire at War. Maybe. --Editor).

Ever notice how when you're cramming, you start being really introspective and go all deep sometimes? There's the Penitent Promise, in which you promise yourself you'll never do last-minute cramming again and be a good student for the rest of your life (with the rest of your life inevitably meaning about 24 minutes after your last exam ends --Ed); there's the "What Am I Doing With My Life?" Self-Argument, where you question whether your standards are as high as you want to be known for/whether you're really doing what you love in life/whether the universe really was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster; there's also the "I'm Sorry Mom & Dad" panicked call home to blubber over the phone apologising for not being a good child and revising in time, and promising to study harder the next time around if only they'll keep paying for your education (this may occur in conjunction with the Penitent Promise).

And then there's the "Something Missing" Soul Search. The sense that something, somewhere, is missing in life; that medicine (or whatever else you're doing) isn't as fun as you thought it would be, but you know that's your fault.; the nagging feeling that maybe, just maybe, you're just going through the motions and not REALLY enjoying what you're doing.

Sound familiar? Or is it just me again? But more on this next time. Now I have to go drown my post-Empire at War guilt in a few hours of revision at least. In the meantime, want something fun to do? Click here!

Awesome, huh?

Cambridge Win

2007-04-12T04:19:00.000+01:00

This is a little late, but...

Cambridge applying foot pressure to Oxford's rear end in the 153rd Annual Boat Race

WOOHOOOO!!

Cambridge Medics Get Their MTAS Kicked

2007-04-10T04:36:00.000+01:00

Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Health, kicks me in the MT-ASS
(Yes, that's my sad face. Yes, I forgot to put make-up on, okay?)

I haven't blogged in a while*, and whilst I'd like to say that this is actually because I've been acting like a proper Cambridge medic and making love to Biochemistry textbooks in my college library, it's actually because I've been plain lazy. And just today I read another profound blog post that made me realise just why I'm being so lazy, but I'll save that for the next post, which will be a Hollywood-esque jam-packed tale of ambition, success, failure, and Donald Trump. (No, it's not going to be an Apprentice review, though good guess! These guys do a much better job than I could. --Editor)

Anyhoo, more MTAS bad news! All that I know about MTAS comes from the medblogs out there that do a terrific job of covering the madness it's unleashed on the wards. But it turns out that there's more to MTAS than just the nonsense affecting junior doctors. The geniuses behind it all, not content with culling working doctors, decided to get right to the root of the problem - medical schools.

As I learnt from the Cambridge representative to the BMA Medical School Conference, in addition to the questionnaire part and the reference part, there's an academic part for medical students to be ranked by their medical schools upon graduation. Once the students are ranked academically, they are divided into 4 quartiles.

Oxford and Cambridge reps to the Conference argued that this system is intrinsically biased against universities with more stringent admissions criteria and tougher exams, like themselves. This is because students at these universities would have to put in more work and sit for tougher exams than students at other universities ranked in the same quartile. Similar motions were put forward by both reps, but they failed to pass because, in the rep's words, "as you must understand the other British medical school representatives at the BMA were not very sympathetic with this idea".

Whoa whoa wait! Before you start lobbing rotten vegetables (and certain forms of animal excrement, for those of you who used up all your rotten vegetables after my last post --Ed) at me for being an arrogant arse, let me say that I do not actually know if Oxford and Cambridge have tougher exams than other universities. Certainly some people seem to think so. But from what I've seen of other universities' courses (and I've been to quite a few other unis - time away from Cambridge is like a drug holiday for an antidepressant user suffering sexual dysfunction --Ed) the only difference that I noticed was that courses elsewhere seemed more...enjoyable. To my clinical-starved self, at least.

So what does this mean? Does it matter? Will it make a difference in four years when we graduate and get spat out into the workforce? I don't know. Should I be bothered? Probably. But not right now, because it's almost 9am and I hear my supervisor coming. If anyone asks, I've been in the library all night.

*yes, I'm going to pretend that some of you out there actually care. I'm young, okay. Let me dream! --Ed.

Why Did The Iranians Release The British Prisoners?

2007-04-05T18:25:00.000+01:00

Because their President was in a good Mah-MOOD.

Geddit?

*ducks to avoid avalanche of rotten tomatoes*

Sorry, it's a terrible joke. That's what you get when you try and spend 18 hours in a library studying continuously (and fail horribly, by the way --Editor).

But you have to admit, no matter what you think of Iran, their president is a shrewd, clever man. That strategic move was brilliant. The BBC agrees.

But in the meantime, I have greater trouble brewing in my quest to desperately finish revision in time for the big Pharm exam on the 24th:

I can't wake up.

No, not like THAT, silly. Does this sound like I was typing this in my sleep? (Don't answer that. --Ed) When I fall asleep nowadays I wake up 12 hours later. With only 12 hours left in a day, I can't revise enough. Since most of you out there reading this are smarter than I am, it'd be great if you could drop off a tip or two on How To Wake Up On Time. (I know, I know, you're prolly wondering why you're reading a blog written by an idiot, but I assure you I am not one. No matter what this test says. --Ed)

In the meantime, I've got some bad MTAS news for you next. Stay tuned!

Doctor What?

2007-04-01T03:19:00.000+01:00

Okay, own up. How many of you watched the new Doctor Who episode yesterday? Come on, I know you medical types will watch anything on TV that has the word 'Doctor' in it, right? It's not just me, right? Right? Hello?

Anyhoo, what made this episode particularly interesting was that the Doctor's new companion is a final-year medical student, and the new episode is set in a hospital. (Granted, the hospital is ripped off the face of the Earth and sent to the moon, but this IS Doctor Who after all. --Editor)

For once, The Doctor becomes The Patient

Funnily enough, the level of realism here was quite high in the med student scenes. You've got the nasty consultant, the smug bastard who laughs at you when you can't find heart sounds using your stethoscope, and the crazy patients. And if you've EVER watched Doctor Who before, you'll know the show isn't exactly known for its level of realism.

Director's motivational speech to these actors: "Imagine you're junior doctors. Now, imagine MMC."

One exchange particularly made me laugh, just before Nasty But Doting Consultant is killed off by the Villain of The Week, who happened to be a patient previously diagnosed with salt deficiency:

Villain: You see, I was only salt-deficient because I'm so very good at absorbing it. But now I need fire in my veins. And who better than a consultant? With blood full of salty fats and vintage wines and all those Michelin star sauces.

Tells you something about doctors when a sci-fi show gets its medical stereotypes right, doesn't it?

MMC Big Daddy Resigns

2007-03-30T20:35:00.000+01:00

Professor Crockard, National Director of MMC, marches out of the MMC bunker for good

I was online at FrontPoint Systems (yes, so I was procrastinating again. What's it to you? YOU AIN'T THE BOSS O' ME!* --Editor) when he broke the news that Professor Alan Crockard, the National Director of Moderning Medical Careers (MMC) has resigned. Read his full story here, and the full letter of resignation at Dr Rant here. (Link not safe for kids. Don't bother with noisy grown-ups arguing, li'l tykes, go play a Teletubbies game or something. --Ed)

Let's take a break from revision together, folks, and take a look at ol' Crocky's letter. In it he simultaneously plays both hero AND villain (a feat previously only managed by President Bush --Ed). He says "The principles of MMC are laudable and I stand by them. More patients should be treated by trained doctors, rather than doctors in training."

Forgive me, for I am but a humble overworked medic, not blessed by the abundance of brain cells required for a position of such great responsibility, but I fail to see how exactly we are supposed to GET trained doctors unless we LET doctors-in-training treat patients.

However towards the end he nicely states "But the overriding message coming back from the profession is that it has lost confidence in the current recruitment system." There we go. At least he's acknowledged that doctors don't bloody like MMC, without resorting to the whole ignore-doctors-won't-apologise-lalala-I-can't-hear-you stance of the Department of Health. If he stepped down in genuine protest at how the system is treating doctors in such a haphazard manner, and if he is not a traitor like the complaint lodged against him suggests, then he is truly worthy of applause.

So c'mon, folks, join me in celebrating by putting this on repeat on your playlist, courtesy of the brilliant DogHorse. Turn the volume up real loud - it's great for accompanying revision!

* unless you're my Director of Studies/Senior Tutor/supervisor, in which case, sorry, sir. I'm heading back to the library now, sir. Honest.

I Am A Lazy Bum

2007-03-29T15:01:00.000+01:00

(To all you wise-guys out there who yelled "Tell us something new!" - I heard you. --Editor)

4 days into lockdown, and what great worldview-revolutionising truths have I learnt?

I have forgotten how to revise.

Lord give me strength to stay in this library without going back to my room to nap every 2 hours...

(And if any of you med students out there have any revision tactics to drop off, now would be a good time too. Especially if you want my eternal gratitude for any reason.)

(To all you pervs wanting to know who the newscaster chick is: she's the French news icon Melissa Theuriau. --Ed)

Thinking Bloggers: Not Just Neurologists

2007-03-25T02:06:00.000+01:00

Cambridge Lockdown Update: Ugh. I haven't slept in 24 hours due to having to jostle for table space at my 24-hour-open library. (Even though we have a 5-week vacation, many students have elected not to go home in favour of staying at the library to revise, despite living 2 hours away in London. Only in Cambridge, folks, only in Cambridge. --Editor) My eyes feel like they're about to pop out of my head, and I am strangely gripped by the suspicion that this may be because my brain has melted and is about to start pouring out of my eye sockets.

But I finally crawl out of my prison cell at the library, come home, and am just about to read my favourite blogs with a nice steaming cup of hot chocolate when I stumble on this. And this. And then Dr Crippen 'BritMeds' me saying this:

The Angry Medic is not overworked, it seems.
"Term ended at Cambridge last week and the holidays have already started..."
It’s all right for some!

Oh hohohoho. Eet's a conspeeracee, I tell you! They're all trying to get me to go back to work. I know whose fault this is. My Director of Studies must have put them up to this. But no matter. I'm still going to get some sleep.

Then, as I lift the cup of hot chocolate to my lips, I glance at my watch, and the kicker hits.

Thanks to British Summer Time, I have just been robbed of an hour.

ONE HOUR! Do you know what an hour MEANS? I could have memorised FOUR different signalling mechanisms in that hour! HEARTLESS CHILD-MURDERING THIRD-WORLD-COUNTRY- ENSLAVING BASTARDS *shakes fist at whoever dreamt up British Summer Time*

So it is only natural, then, that I put down my cup of hot chocolate, clear everything from my hard, spartan wooden table, and begin rhythmically slamming my head against the tabletop, praying for unconsciousness before any more bad news hits me.

But just before unconsciousness swallows me, I check my mail, and hallelujah! My first piece of good news for the day. My favourite nurse Mother Jones has tagged me with the Thinking Blogger Award, an award which I've been following across the web but which I never thought I'd be worthy of, what with my inane ramblings here.

It's called the Thinking Blogger meme, and I'm honoured to pass it on to the 5 blogs that make me think (in no particular order):

1. If you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).

1. Michelle vs The Med Student
2. Nurse William
3. The Rumours Were True
4. HospitalPhoenix
5. A Jolly Company

These are blogs whose subject matter, being far more substantial than mine, make me think. Tag, you're it! You can of course choose not to participate in the meme, but I give you the award nevertheless.

Now excuse me whilst I go get my regular ~~six~~ five hours of sleep. (Dangit. --Ed)

Lockdown

2007-03-22T02:00:00.000Z

Our Director of Studies encouraging us to revise.

Rifle included purely for effect-enhancing purposes.

Term ended last Thursday here at Cambridge, and so begins the five-week-long Easter vacation. This means most Cambridge students (even those lazy dossers doing Land Economy and SPS who spend all year rowing and prancing about on stage stealing good parts from poor hardworking medics who obviously deserve them better [not that I'm bitter or anything] --Editor) start to realise how close they are to exams (67 days, but hey, who's counting? --Ed), get all penitent about not doing enough work, start to work, freak out after realising how much work they ACTUALLY have to do, go home and fall at their parents' feet apologising for shaming the family and bringing dishonour into their homes (and if you're Japanese, possibly try harakiri --Ed) and then go into lockdown mode for the rest of the vacation to prepare for exams.

College libraries stay open around the clock. Porters patrol the libraries at night. And at St John's College, the famed Suicide Watch will soon start patrolling St John's Tower to deter any poor sod who realises he's in the wrong university and decides he wants to go scream "WHY ME?!" at God in person.

As for me, I'm starting to get my act together and will soon instruct the porters to forward my mail to 'Room With Plastic Skeleton, The Library, Jesus College'. Unfortunately, I'm not the only medic determined to move into the library. I'm anticipating a blogworthy battle coming up. Wish me luck. In the meantime, go check out what happened when I became a disability patient* on Medscape. No smartarse cane jokes please--you quickly find out how useful they are for bashing people on the head...

*Tell me you love the post title. I spent HOURS dreaming up the title. You MUST love the title! Love the title or die by cane bashing!

The Empire Is Struck Back Against, Part II

2007-03-20T04:01:00.000Z

Aboard the MTAS Death Star, Emperor Blair and Darth Hewitt try to get themselves out of hot soup

After last Saturday's widely-publicised march in London by junior doctors protesting against MTAS, Patricia Hewitt has gone into hiding and left behind her henchman Lord Hunt, the Health Minister, to face the music and gibber incoherently. Dr Crippen wonders where she's gone; I suspect she's hiding on the MTAS Death Star.

And since my last post on the MTAS debacle (which was picked up in last week's BritMeds due to my use of the word 'wankpile' to categorise it; I don't think that's weird at all, do you? --Editor) Opposition Leader David Cameron has finally got it through his thick head that hey, thousands of doctors protesting could actually be a good time to campaign for votes:

David Cameron gets a clue

But you have to admit, his speech was stirring. It made doctors feel something they haven't felt in a long time -- like they were valued. You can watch it here.

Comments under the original post here please.

The Angry Medic: Comic Relief Edition

2007-03-17T20:27:00.000Z

I happen to think I am funny. I persist in this belief, despite the fact that the comments box on my previous post (which I happen to think was quite funny) has not exploded with praise and adulation, and despite the fact that when I go on stage in a comedy play I usually get off stage either by being yanked off by a horrified show manager or accompanied by a torrent of rotten vegetables thrown from the audience. But as a funny medic, it should come as no surprise that my favourite charity is Comic Relief.

Therefore in support of Comic Relief, I urge you to spend a few pounds to give children in need a better future by buying 'Shaggy Blog Stories', a collection of 100 short humorous pieces from the UK blogosphere, put together by prominent blogger Troubled Diva in just 7 days. All profits from the sale of this book will be donated to the Comic Relief charity.

For the next week, my blog banner will link directly to the Shaggy Blog Stories website. The full list of bloggers featured can be found here. More information about Comic Relief and its signature event, Red Nose Day, can be found by clicking on the picture of the beautiful ladies above (mind where you click, you perverts. --Editor).

Comments under my previous post here please. Have a great weekend!

This Post Is Brought To You By The Letter 'B'

2007-03-16T04:15:00.000Z

B. What does B stand for, children? Let us count together.

Firstly, it stands for bitching. Which is what this post is going to be about. So if you can't stand a pissed-off medic ranting about his extremely sad but ironically humourous medicky excuse for a life, then for heaven's sake, press the back button now and go back to whichever porn site you came from. Or go here and dance with the fluffy bunnies.

Secondly, B stands for Type B. As in Type B medical students. As explained by Michelle of Michelle vs The Med Student.

Normally it's tough being a Type B in a med school. You aren't as driven as some of the people in your classroom, fine. You don't take as many notes, fine. You don't score 99% on every test, fine. You still graduate, get unleashed on the poor sods who are going to be your patients, and get to do doctorly stuff like jab people and stuff your fingers up their bums. And as long as you don't kill anyone, you'll be okay. (If you DO kill someone, then you're either 1) very unlucky, or 2) an idiot. Don't point at me and tell the judge at your malpractice trial "But some Cambridge medic said it was okay if I killed a few people along the way!" --Editor)

But to be a Type B medical student in Cambridge? Cambridge, Seat of Academic Power, Home of Zombie Lecturers Who Stay In Their Labs All Day, Birthplace of Research So Impressively Named It Makes Your Granny's False Teeth Fall Out Just Pronouncing It?

Burn in hell, SINNER!

A Cambridge Biochemistry lecturer

Oh heck no. If you don't sit in the library for at least 8 hours a day and whack some fat textbook against your forehead until you can recite everything in it including the author's grandmother's favourite dog's name, then you're not fit to be in Cambridge. You're a Type B. Throw off those fake glasses, you bastard, and pack your bags. Here's a ticket to Hull. Try your luck there, and if they don't take you in, we've already told the British Institute of Learning Disabilities you're coming. Retard.

What else can we find for the letter B? Oh yes, here's one: burnout. As written about magnificently by the inimitable Sid Schwab of Surgeonsblog. I had a supervision today where my supervisor was a real doctor (you know, one of those sad blokes who slaves away in hospital, not some aging hippie who has a PhD and sits in a lab for 5 months obsessing over some obscure molecule which about 3 people in the world genuinely care about. --Ed). As some of you know, I'm interested in doing surgery as a career. I tell my supervisor this. And he tells me he's never doing surgery because it's a horrible, horrible specialty, where all the extremely competitive anal-retentive medics just backbite and bitch about each other in a mad scramble to the top. In fact, he goes so far as to say "It's just like an episode of The Apprentice".

The true nature of surgery

Why the hell am I doing medicine again? Remind me, someone. Please. Answers on the back of a postcard to Jesus College, Cambridge. Either that, or send me a 9mm handgun so I can put myself out of my misery. (But not before taking out a few of my course organisers first. Hey, if I'm going to hell, I want company on the way down. --Ed)

And if you've managed to keep reading this far without passing out cold on your laptop or taking me up on my earlier offer of clicking over to Fluffy Bunny Land, then congrats! I'm not all moan moan bitch bitch, you know. There's some meaning to this B nonsense I've been spouting all this while, and it's that I've finally made the blogging B-list, according to this little Bloglebrity gadget. I've been wanting to make it out of the C-list for a while, and now I'm finally on the B-List. Give it a click and see what list you're on. (Disclaimer: The results are UTTERLY MEANINGLESS and don't mean a thing about blogging ability or popularity, in fact. It's just another one of my lame ways to pass the time whilst waiting to fail my degree. --Ed)

Now excuse me whilst I go do a little lame dance now to celebrate the fact that whilst I am totally and utterly screwed in my career and my life, I at least am nerdy enough to be able to maintain a blog. Though I may have to change its name soon. The Angry Lawyer, anyone? The Angry MBA-Holder? The Angry Construction Worker? Catchy, no?

The Empire Is Struck Back Against

2007-03-14T04:15:00.000Z

Aboard the MTAS Death Star, Emperor Blair and Darth Hewitt find that the Force is no longer with them

The doctors have begun to strike back against the injustice that is MTAS.

Earlier last week they turned to David Cameron, Opposition Leader. They looked to him as a saviour, someone who would use the huge political stick that is the MTAS fiasco to beat Tony Blair on the head and secure several thousand votes. So great was the call that MTAS became the top question on Cameron's Open Blog, where the Conservative leader responds to the top 5 posts every week.

Sadly he has let them down. His response, viewable here, saw him sidestepping the issue like a Labour politician. This idiotic political move is already costing him votes, as an be seen from the responses on his blog.

Doctors wait in vain for David Cameron to save them

But the doctors aren't done in yet! What do good, honest UK citizens do when civil rights are threatened and evil greedy government types screw them over? Why, march, of course. This Saturday's 'March in March' is hoped to raise more media pressure on the government to fix the situation.

The deaneries themselves have spoken out. Some have resigned in disgust. The Royal Colleges have condemned it. In fact, several of the UK's leading doctors have spoken out against it, including, I am proud to add, several of my lecturers here at Cambridge.

Dudes who have spoken out against MTAS

But all this is above my humble medical student head. All I know is that the future suddenly looks a lot bleaker, and unless all these angry people in white coats can convince this woman to change her mind, I'd better start looking for jobs in Australia.

So what can I do? Several things. Firstly, I've done my part to educate the international community on what is happening here in the UK by writing a post on it for Medscape. Do check it out and leave a comment or two, if only to confirm what's happening, as the editor left out the BBC news links I gave her (either that or she thinks I'm a loon, which isn't too far from the truth. --Editor).

I also blogged here about the tragic passing of Laura Case, a former medical student at Cambridge who was killed whilst delivering medical aid in Uganda. Her father has written to me with a heartfelt letter that he has sent to The Times, saying how Laura disagreed with the current system of training junior doctors:

My daughter, Laura Case, was a medical student who was killed in Uganda while working there in a hospital as part of her final year training. (Times 20 February).

Like most medical students, she was committed, but not particularly idealistic. Nor was she political. She was, though, angry about the failings in the training and selection of junior doctors. Admittedly her experience was only her own hospital area, but she thought the central organisation and supervision of her training poor, and when on six weekly rotations round various hospitals and GP practices found, with some notable exceptions, that students’ training was often chaotically organised, and students tolerated rather than involved. The view of senior doctors seemed to be that it was better now than when they were young, so ‘get used to it’

She found the failure of government to plan effectively for the requirement for doctors dispiriting, as it lurched from creating new medical colleges, and then in the face of ‘overcapacity’ ditching non EU doctors that had been encouraged to train here, and now admitting an oversupply of newly trained doctors due to ‘changes in the system’. The actual selection process, which has been marginally improved from last year when humans were more or less replaced by computers in selecting junior doctors for posts, is still so useless that a group of consultants recently refused to conduct job interviews on the grounds that the process was unfair. (Times 6 March).

The Department of Health and Downing Street both defend the position with weasel words, but junior doctors, not usually a militant bunch, are so incensed that they will stage a march on March 17^th to protest at the position. (www.remedyuk.org). My daughter was well aware of the cost of her training both in terms of taxpayer money and her six years of study; let’s hope many more join the thousands of young doctors planning to march to highlight this cavalier handling of investment and talent, and the government’s inadequate response to the problem.

The medical profession has spoken. We will not stand for dictatorial high-handedness with a policy that looks like it was dreamt up by a bunch of baboons in a doughnut shop with John Prescott. Like this comment says from a friend of Laura's:

Compassion is fine but Laura would have wanted you to fight. Stick a card in front of the complacent - 'Laura Case died because she cared enough to be a doctor.'

The First Duty

2007-03-09T17:33:00.000Z

"With great power comes great responsibility"

What is the first duty of a doctor? Of a nurse? A paramedic? A first-aider?

What is the first duty of the medical profession itself?

There comes a moment in every medical student’s life, when he realises that all he’s learning is not just for exams, that one day he will be out there on his own, with real live patients and no medical professor leaning over his shoulder to guide him.

I knew it would happen.

And this week it did.

Something happened to me last week that reminded me why I'm doing what I do. And that I'm far, far away from becoming a doctor, despite the fact that I technically become one in 4 years.

And so I wrote a post on it for Medscape. Since it was posted, I have received over 50 comments, as well as numerous emails from fellow medics here at Cambridge who saw it happen. I am not proud of what I did that day. I have questioned myself countless times over the past few weeks, on my ideals, my motivation, and what it really means to be a doctor.

Read the full post on Medscape.

Giant Penguins Invade Cambridge!

2007-03-07T00:11:00.000Z

"Hey Kate."

"What?"

"There's a guy walking behind us."

"So? This is King's Parade, Tom. The centre of Cambridge. There are TONS of people walking around us."

"No, no, I think this guy's a bit...weird."

"Why?"

"For some reason, he's carrying a giant penguin."

Sigh. The things I do for art...

Medics Revue promotional penguin

"No, Osama...I Am Your Father!"

2007-03-05T01:15:00.000Z

Darth Osama bin Vader

Well, okay. So maybe that statement's got a LITTLE inaccuracy in it.

Actually, I'm Osama's MOTHER.

Or at least I will be, when the Medics Revue opens this Wednesday at the ADC Theatre in Cambridge. Titled 'Happy Fetus', it's a fast-paced series of sketches that's sure to induce side-splitting laughter (don't worry, we've got NHS Direct on speed-dial. --Editor) without a penguin in sight.

It runs from Wednesday to Saturday at 11pm, and has always sold out in the past, so book your tickets (which are priced to suit the average student's constricted wallet) today here at the ADC Theatre website or by calling the box office at 01223 300085.

Our past shows (with the ever-so-catchy title 'The Chronicles of Hernia: The Lion, The Stitch and The Ward-Round' --Ed) went to Edinburgh Fringe festival last year and performed to sell-out audiences. This year's production promises to be no less entertaining, especially with a crazed medic completely fed up of lecture theatres in it.

So do me a favour and when you see Osama's mom come on stage, clap loudly. Either that or laugh uproariously when Barney the Dinosaur comes on stage. I wrote that sketch, and if after 573 times rehearsing it, it turns out not to be funny, I'll be eaten alive by my fellow cast members, who despite all being medics, won't be bothered about catching E. coli infections at the time.

Ah well. At least then I won't have to worry about MTAS anymore.

The Angry Medic Finally Gets MMC & MTAS

2007-03-02T02:27:00.000Z

Wheel of Fortune: Doctors' Edition

Remember Wheel of Fortune? That game show where, given a hint, you had to spin a large wheel and win money by correctly guessing letters illuminated on a giant board by an inexplicably lovely assistant who was the subject of wet dreams and midnight fantasies everywhere?

Well the UK Government, capitalising on the gameshow's popularity and deciding that doctors' lives are too bloody bland and boring, has decided to introduce its own version for doctors in an attempt to spice up their lives a little (and get their lazy arses off those plush taxpayer-funded chairs --Editor). And they've called it MMC.

Go ahead. Look at the picture above. See if you can fill in the last letter for the win.

Before today, I had no concept of the horror of MMC and MTAS. Oh, I read about it all right. Any half-brained drooling numbskull looking at the blogs out there could tell it was horrible. HospitalPhoenix, a good competent surgeon who genuinely cares about his profession, lost sleep over it. SHP, the very sort of doctor keeping the NHS afloat, has lost hope. Even her partner has not been to work for fear of her breaking down. Dr Rant, being his usual self, has been mouthing off about it.

But I, being a mere medical student cosied up in his snug ivory tower, buried under piles of drug name sheets and obscure biochemistry named-after-car-license-plate molecules to remember, didn't understand. All I could do was pat them on the shoulder, drop a nice comment on their blogs, and hope that things would be better.

Until now.

Dr Crippen has finally put it in language I can understand. Here he posts sample questions with sample answers from an unsuccessful candidate who now has to emigrate to find work. And here are more example questions with sample answers from a more fortunate candidate.

I read the questions. I read the answers. And then it hit me. Because I had seen some of the questions before. Also on an arbitrarily marked, wishy-washy-waffle-requiring exam known as Preparing For Patients (PfP).

I have blogged about PfP before. The questions asked are rather arbitrary, marked not by doctors but by "communication skills experts". No one knows if they will pass or fail; I know gifted medics who spent hours slaving over their PfP reports, only to be told that they couldn't progress to the next year because they had failed this minor subject (because they didn't dot an I or misspelt a few words. No, seriously --Ed). Conversely, everyone knows someone who spent two hours on the last day typing up some crap, handing it in 15 minutes before the deadline and passing. (Not that I'd know anything about that. Ahem. --Ed)

In many ways, it is a lottery. Compare the questions from MTAS and from PfP:

MTAS: Describe a recent example from your surgical experience of a time when you found it difficult to make an effective judgement in a challenging situation. How did you overcome this difficulty, and how has this experience informed your subsequent practice?

PfP: Give examples from an interview you conducted with a patient to illustrate what you did that helped and hindered making the interview successful
a) From the viewpoint of the patient
b) From your viewpoint in terms of gathering information about the symptoms
c) From your viewpoint in terms of gathering information about the illness (the patient's perspective)

See the similarity? Both questions require wishy-washy bullcrap (or require you to become John friggin' Steinbeck). In fact, the PfP question stops just short of requiring you to bloody read the patient's mind. There are no correct answers; whether you pass or fail depends on whether the course organiser thinks you maintained enough eye contact or said "hmm" and "uh-huh" enough times in your patient interview. I have known students who, having run out of ideas, put down "I smiled at the patient" and "I patted his arm".

But PfP serves a purpose. I'm not complaining, because it gave me the opportunity to finally go to hospital and see real patients. And if you fail it, you can always resit it, and almost always pass the second time (unless you do something really stupid, like turn your patient's respirator off for kicks --Ed).

Look at the final paragraph of the successful MTAS candidate's answer to the above question:

On reflection, I realised the value of my clinical judgement, prioritisation, teamwork and communication. The experience increased my confidence in adopting leadership roles.

I know exactly what that is. Any medical student who has done PfP, indeed any student who has ever filled in a UCAS personal statement to apply to university, will also recognise that for EXACTLY what it is.

Pure and utter bullcrap.

Don't get me wrong; the candidate was very smart to write that. And indeed, it's simply because I'm so good at crapping that I got into university in the first place (that and the sexy eyelashes. --Ed) But it's still waffle. It's the waffle we come up with to pad our CVs/personal statements. It's the waffle we type into our PfP reports when we need to fill two A4 pages. It's waffle that hardworking, competent, caring doctors with families to feed and lives to save should not have to think up after shovelling through decades and decades of this:

Actual Cambridge University lecture material

Entire careers. All dependent on one lottery. I cannot imagine how it must feel like filling out that form. Knowing that everything you stand for, everything you've worked your entire life for, is dependent on what you put down. If you're a doctor who has recently gone through this, I offer you my admiration. I simply cannot imagine the hell you must be going through.

Some of my friends have advised me to switch to law and run whilst I can. I'm seriously thinking of listening to them.

Look Ma, A Dinosaur-Sized Grand Rounds!

2007-02-27T03:51:00.000Z

"Look, that huge dinosaur's going in circles around the city--in fact, you could say it's making some Grand Rounds!"

Grand Rounds 3.23 is up at Musings of a Dinosaur. The #1 Dinosaur has put up a very slick collection of posts, loosely centred around the theme that the only thing that doesn't change about life is that things change. In fact she says the more things change the more they stay the same, but they still change. So what she's saying is that things change but don't change, and in not changing they change, so in the end they change. But without changing. Only they do.

(Ow, my head hurts. --Editor)

A couple of medical students made it into this edition of Grand Rounds...MedStudentGod over at Creating The Godcomplex, and Vitum Medicinus, whose entry also begins with a dinosaur name. I'm surprised it took me so long to discover him. Guess you could say I'm a bit of a DINOSAUR. (Ooh, so many lame dinosaur jokes! I'm on a ROLL, baby. --Ed)

Speaking of dinosaurs, the incredibly modern and ultra-efficient MTAS system, which has been praised by doctors to the high heavens for making their lives so much easier, yields results this week. Good luck to everyone waiting to see if their names have been pulled out of the MMC hat. I've got all my fingers AND toes crossed for you (never mind that the cramps in said fingers and toes have gotten so bad that I've got an ambulance team permanently following me around. --Ed)

Another lesser-known lottery going on is the Cambridge clinical school application program, for which results are also coming out. Again, good luck to all of you. It seems so far off for me, I feel I'll surely be as old as a dinosaur when I get to that stage. (Ooh see what I did there? Hardehar --Ed)

(Credit for the MTAS Lottery image goes to Professor Scrub, the old dinosaur. --Ed)

"I Was A Doctor For The Taliban"

2007-02-24T11:41:00.000Z

Remember the recent uproar I caused with my Medscape post about surgeons? (careful, there are over 100 comments there now, and quite a BIT of temper--you might want to rent a HazMat suit before you read some of them --Ed) Enlightened by the insight I gained from some of the comments posted, and driven by my own curiosity (as well as the crowds of angry surgeons chanting outside my door --Ed) to learn more about this profession I adore, I decided to attend another talk given by Mr Philip Henman, an orthopaedic surgeon from Newcastle who had been a combat surgeon during quite a few conflicts, most recently in Afghanistan before the latest war.

So after what seemed like four hours and five connecting flights, I arrived at Addenbrookes hospital on the outskirts of the city. Thanks to a bus timetable as reliable as US Senator Strom Thurmond's integrity*, I arrived at the talk late, but slunk in just as Mr Henman started talk, titled Combat Surgery: The Great Game from the Sidelines with a foray into his posting to Kuwait during the earlier war there, and how he coped with being a trauma surgeon on the frontlines.

He went on to describe his posting in Afghanistan before George W. Bush went trigger-happy into the region, and his medical work whilst the Taliban, the hardline Muslim government in power at the time, were still the recognised rulers there. Whilst his assignment with the British Territorial Army meant that his primary duty was to treat British servicemen there, the trauma unit he worked in couldn't turn away emergency cases being brought in from the battlefield, and these were mostly locals. So, in effect, he was a doctor for the Taliban. Back when they were still the good guys.

Read my latest post about what Mr Henman said over at Medscape. It describes how, from a combat surgeon's point of view, the conflict there was very different from what was reported in the media. A great example was when he had a conversation with one of his patients, a benign-looking man playfully holding a flower in his mouth when his photo was taken. This man also just happened to be the local Taliban commanding officer. Confiding in Mr Henman, he told him that all the Taliban wanted to do was to start from scratch, rebuilding Afghanistan, and once that was done, all he wanted to do personally was to settle down and open a hotel.

It was an enlightening talk, not only because of the unique view of the battlefield from a surgeon trapped in the middle of it (in an absolutely horrible-looking army camp complex, might I add) but also because Mr Henman gave us some insight into bullet injuries and landmine blasts, complete with gory pictures and actual bullets fired in the war. Do read the post over at Medscape's The Differential and leave a comment if you like it. (Careful though, there are already some comments there, and just a BIT of temper, so you might--- heyyy waitaminute. I'm getting the oddest sense of deja vu now. As if I've said something similar before... --Ed)

*(come on. Dedicating your life to denying human beings basic rights on the basis of a little melanin in their skin, then losing it, banging one of them and plopping out a baby? Disgraceful. They don't make racists like they used to. --Ed)

Snapshots Of Hell: The Cambridge Round-Up, Weeks 2, 3, 4 and 5: Of Phallic Snowmen, The Cambridge Footlights, and Her Majesty's Secret Cervix

2007-02-22T18:15:00.000Z

Okay, so I've been a lazy bum (and this surprises you? Hello? Have you READ me before? Unless of course you're new to this blog, in which case, you'll learn... --Ed) and not updated the Cambridge Round-up for a few weeks now, but hey, so little happens here anyway that the local newspapers have resorted to the American FOX News -like tactics to hype and sensationalise to sell copies. So I've decided, to save everyone's time, to distill 4 weeks' worth of happenings in Cambridge to a nice little edition where you only get the most newsworthy happenings. (And if two out of those three happenings involve me, well, that's a complete coincidence. Really. --Ed)

You Think He's Compensating For Something?
I'm ashamed that Dr Crippen found this before I did. A couple of weeks ago it snowed in Cambridge, and people went as wonky as can be expected for a city in which so many people are under so much stress (for a full report on the madness that ensued, look here --Ed) but apparently I missed the most newsworthy piece of madness of all, which got highlighted in last week's edition of Dr Crippen's BritMeds. Some student, for reasons best not speculated on here, decided to erect (snigger --Ed) a statue of a rather rude bit of anatomy in the middle of Parker's Piece, and got hauled to the station for it. Take a look at the article here and see how he went nuts (giggle --Ed). Literally.

Cambridge Footlights Comedy Club Finds New Star
The Cambridge Footlights.

One of the most famous comedy clubs in the world.

For years, famous comedians have walked through its doors and jumpstarted careers that led them to international fame and fortune. Star-studded names adorn its alumni list. Hugh Laurie (Dr House). John Cleese. Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat). Douglas Adams (author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). Emma Thompson. Jimmy Carr.

And now, ME.

*thunderous applause*

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, yours truly has finally joined the ranks of Footlights comedians, as of last Tuesday, when I took to the stage in a Smoker, a selection of short sketches performed fortnightly at the ADC Theatre in Cambridge. It marks the realisation of a dream for me, as I've always wanted to go up on stage under the Footlights banner.

Of course, afterwards I had to face a very angry Director of Studies, my Senior Tutor, and two pissed-off supervisors, all of whom insisted I stop prancing about on stage and concentrate on my studies, but who cares? When I'm begging on the streets in future, at least I can say I was a Footlights comedian. What do you think about 'Will Make You Laugh For Food' as a beggars' sign, huh?

On Her Majesty's Secret Cervix
Cringe-worthy title, isn't it? But get up off the floor and out of your fetal positions, because it's actually a very witty title. Firstly it illustrates the newsworthy fact that Her Majesty WAS in fact in Cambridge, to open the new cancer wing at Addenbrookes Hospital. This grand occasion, for us normal medical students, was marked by having to wait 30 minutes in a hot, very crowded and increasingly noisy lecture theatre until it became apparent that our lecturer (who was none other than the great Professor Andrew Wyllie, discoverer of cell apoptosis) was not going to turn up. (Because, of course, being a Great and Famous Lecturer, he was off to meet the Queen. --Ed)

And now the smarty-pants-ness of the title becomes apparent, because On Her Majesty's Secret Cervix (a parody of the James Bond film title On Her Majesty's Secret Service) was the title of the Cambridge Medics Revue a few years ago. The Medics Revue is a sketch show written and performed by Cambridge medics every year, and yours truly is in this year's show, wittily titled Happy Fetus. This year it's on from March 7th to 10th, and is guaranteed to make people laugh, make my supervisor's blood pressure shoot through the roof, and make my grades fall like the life expectancy of a patient going into cardiac arrest.

But hey, at least it's vaguely academic (and by that I mean it's got the word 'Medics' in the title --Ed). So that's not so bad, right? Right?

I'm so screwed.

R.I.P. Laura Case

2007-02-21T13:35:00.000Z

Right after my last post on medics who entered their profession because they really cared about changing lives, it seems another one of them has been taken away from us.

It has just come to our attention that the British student in this article from The Times was a medical student at Jesus College doing her elective in rural Uganda. Laura Alexandra Case, 24, was killed in a road accident last Sunday. From her project description, forwarded to us by our Director of Studies, it can be seen that Laura truly wanted to make a difference in a part of the world with serious deficiencies in healthcare:

As part of my final year of medical studies at UCL I have the exciting opportunity to spend two month in a hospital anywhere in the world. The hospital I have chosen is situated in rural, South Western Uganda, near the Rwandan border.

This will be a fantastic opportunity to see medicine practiced under very different conditions and constraints to those I have encounter in the UK, as well as introducing me to a very different disease spectrum to that which I have gained experience in so far in my training. The hospital’s staff to patient ratio is incredibly small by western standards, with approximately 5 doctors for 200 medical beds. In this setting medical students provide much needed support to the consultants and I am very much looking forward to the challenge of a far greater level of responsibility in comparison to that which I have in the UK. (Source: Laura Case's project description)

Laura was also involved in research that would help the hospital prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission, in a hospital where the inpatient rate of HIV is nearly 40%.

It is my firm belief, whatever her religious beliefs were, that she is in a better place. A far better place.

Rest in peace, Laura.

Ask Not What Your Profession Can Do For You...

2007-02-18T02:02:00.000Z

What can the medical profession do for humanity?

What has this, one of the most ancient professions, one of the most controversial and yet highly respected "conspiracies against the laiety" (as George Bernard Shaw put it --Ed) do for mankind? What HAS it done, through the ages, through all the civilisations, battles and revolutions that have shaped mankind?

Being in a highly traditional course, it is easy to lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel. This is simply because the tunnel is so long (a Cambridge medical course lasts 6 years; longer if you choose certain course options). I signed up to be a doctor. I wanted to wear the white coat, to treat patients, to haunt hospitals, to prescribe medicine. But a medical course is not so easy. Before they teach you what you need to go out into the world and treat, you have to jump over a few hurdles first. You have to learn biochemistry. You have to learn physiology. You have to learn pharmacology. Many aspects of these subjects will not be necessary for your career. Entire chapters will be more appropriate for pure scientists than for medics. But for various reasons, you have to learn everything. It's good for you.

But it makes you forget. It makes you look at medicine as one long tortuous road with no end in sight. It turns you into a fact-memorising, exam-taking machine. Nowhere is this more apparent than here in Cambridge, where some of the world's brightest students come and, adapting the most successful strategy to pass exams, turn into emotionless nerds.

And there comes a point when you forget what you're doing this for. What it was that drove you, idealistic and bright-eyed, to medical school in the first place. What you believed the medical profession could do.

But every once in a while, along comes something to remind you. Along comes something that tells you that there is a world out there, with real living breathing patients to treat. This, for me, came in the form of this snippet from Grey's Anatomy a few weeks ago. It is a clip that every medical student, indeed every healthcare professional, should watch:

Yes, it's cheesy. Yes, it's a scripted show. But it rings true. When I watched it, the spoon from my plate to my mouth froze in mid-air for a good two minutes. This realisation, this faith in medicine being able to do more than simply cure people and send them home, is what drives hundreds of thousands of dedicated doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals around the world, even in crappy medical systems.

We all need to be reminded. We all need to know that medicine can do more for humanity than what is apparent. Some of us need to be reminded more than others. But the knowledge will keep us all going.

Valentine's Day: Of Donald Trump, Nurses, And Gorillas In Pathology Lectures

2007-02-14T14:38:00.000Z

Ah, Valentine's Day. A day when undying love is declared, when girlfriends who normally berate their boyfriends for not buying them presents berate them FOR buying a Valentine's present, saying that their love did not need an overly-commercialised occasion to be celebrated on; a day when sad singles mope around in singles' bars listening to beatniks read poetry and chugging Bloody Marys trying to get drunk and bring on the sweet release of sleep a little earlier. (Not that I'd know anything about that. Hic. --Ed)

A day when people in Cambridge, eccentric as they are, become even MORE eccentric and do all sorts of weird things. I actually met one medic couple who told me, ensconced in each others' arms, that they were going to celebrate this sacred day by quizzing each other on Anatomy in the library. (Exactly HOW they were going to, uh, explore anatomy, they didn't say, but I'd rather not know. --Ed)

This morning's Pathology lecture saw our lecturer (who, by the way, is a self-confessed sex addict and who is a GOLDMINE for funny quotes--wait for another upcoming edition of a post like this one --Ed) being interrupted by a loud yell from the rear of the lecture hall, as a medic ran down the stairs followed by a large gorilla, and presented her with a bouquet of roses and a box of chocolates. (Okay, so the large gorilla was actually a RAG volunteer in a costume, but still. It's a GORILLA in a Pathology lecture. Spot the odd one out. --Ed)

The mystery in my previous post has been solved...NurseQuack WAS sent by HospitalPhoenix after all. He had dropped a pretty big hint in his Valentine's Day post, but I, uh, hadn't read it yet. Yeah, that's it. Donald Trump, who for a while now has been developing quite the crush on NurseQuack, was so overjoyed that he flew NurseQuack back to Trump Tower in New York to have a sumptuous seven-course Valentine's Day dinner.

HospitalPhoenix says here NurseQuack told her boyfriend she was on a nurse-prescribing course in Cambridge. She is. The medicine being prescribed to her is Donald Trump.

Happy Valentine's Day, folks!

Nurse Quacktitioner Arrives

2007-02-12T14:59:00.000Z

Yesterday after supervision (a Cambridge term for tutorial; no, the University hasn't employed people to walk around us holding whips to make sure we study. Yet. --Ed) I was rummaging around in my pigeonhole, trying to get my supervisor's ringing voice out of my ear (if you must know, his exact words were something along the lines of "You NUMBSKULL! What do you mean, you DON'T know which lipoxins are formed by 15-lipoxygenase? How old are you, eight?!" --Ed) when my hands hit a rather fat envelope. It was suspiciously unmarked; I thought one of the surgeons offended by this post had finally sent me a bomb or a remnant from an anal fistulectomy or something.

So imagine my surprise when, fifteen minutes later, after I'd finished donning my HazMat suit and was carefully slicing open the envelope, this fell out:

This is, of course, one of Mattel's now-discontinued Nurse Quacktitioner dolls, made famous by HospitalPhoenix's blogging. And a lovely surprise it is, too.

But who is it from? The envelope was unmarked, except for a postcode which I will not disclose, and is it a gift, or a temporary loan? Is it a Valentine's Day hint from one of the hot nurses I met recently on my hospital rotations?

If it IS a gift, thanks to whoever sent it! It's lovely, and it made my day. Donald Trump is also overjoyed; he's been developing quite the crush on NurseQuack for some time now.

If it isn't a gift (or if it's filled with anthrax or E.Coli or gunpowder or something--Ed): Alright, who's the wise guy?

I'm Dreaming Of A White Change Of Shift

2007-02-09T14:11:00.000Z

(Why the weird post title, you ask? Ah, 'tis but another concoction of my brilliantly witty mind. You see, this post is both about the nursing blog carnival Change Of Shift as well as about the fact that it snowed yesterday. Hahaha geddit geddit seewhatIdidthere? --Editor)

Change of Shift is up over at my favourite nursing blog, Nurse Ratched's Place, which is also the only medblog I know of to have appeared in Blogger's Blogs Of Note. Mother Jones was kind enough to include one of my posts (yes, medic posts CAN appear in nursing blog carnivals. No, you do not have to be handsome enough to have every nurse in your hospital want to make out with you, but it helps. Cough. --Ed)

This edition of Change of Shift has a Valentine's Day theme, and Mama Jones wrote some very nice words about me:

The Angry Medic wrote this post about a nurse with a hard, tough exterior, and a heart of gold. He says that she likes him. Well of course she likes you, Angry Medic. You’re a good guy. That’s why those nurses you write about on your blog want to drag you into the nearest closet just like you see on Grey’s Anatomy. You better watch out. One of those nurses that you are so fond of may have special plans for you on Valentine’s Day.

No, that is NOT me blushing. I, um, just have some red stuff on my face. Ketchup from lunch or something. I do not blush! I am a very manly very hot medic. Cough.

Yesterday I undertook an interesting experiment in human psychology. Cambridge is a funny place. Everyone's under so much stress to perform; medical students with glasses thicker than A-Level Statistics textbooks, lecturers who sacrifice time, hairlines and contact with sunlight to stick in their labs waiting for a breakthrough, and porters who double up as riot police every night as the college bar empties. So sometimes all it takes to drive people over the edge is a small relatively mundane occurrence.

Like a little bit of snow.

King's College Great Gate

Now I know places where it snows so much that it's nothing to laugh about *ducks to avoid Eskimo whaling spear* but it NEVER snows in Cambridge, so when it does, things go a little cuckoo. The widescreen madness started at about 8.30am at the Great Gate of Trinity College, where amidst desperate medics on bicycles skidding in the streets and crashing into restaurants, a bunch of mathematicians suddenly lost their inhibitions (hey, normal people lose it when they get drunk, mathmos lose it when it snows. Who knows what goes on in their heads? --Ed) and started a snowball fight. Out came one of the porters to see what all the ruckus was, and BAM went a snowball to his face.

He then went back into the Porters' Lodge, summoned the other porters, and following standard University procedure in dealing with snowball-throwing mathmos, started a snowball fight with them.

Trinity mathmos finally lose it. Spot the tourist desperately trying to get away.

I myself skipped lectures and spent the day doing the tourist thing, outsnapping even the hordes of Japanese tourists thronging King's Parade. Taking a cue from the Bohemian Road Nurse, I enclose some of the more interesting shots I took along my travels:

Tourists snapping away on King's College Chapel, right before a porter came and kicked them off the lawn.

A Jesus College student risking expulsion, beheading, hanging and any number of other archaic punishments in the University Constitution to build a snowman on Chapel Court lawns before the porters catch him.

Jesuan students risk the wrath of Trinity College porters to build a snowman on Trinity College lawns (because everyone knows Trinity snow is more "legendary" than Jesus snow.)

"This is the best damn snow in the South of England. I only step on the best snow, y'hear? And this is the best snow. It's Trump Snow. We should charge people to step on it."

The Apprentice Los Angeles: Week 2

2007-02-08T01:45:00.000Z

A Donald Trump Action Figure in Cambridge

Right, after being a very busy highly productive medical student (read: lazy bastard --Ed) for a few weeks, I'm back to posting mini-recaps for The Apprentice Season 6. Checking out the NBC website before writing this review, I realised that they've taken the liberty of giving each of the candidates a convenient little label, either for their own amusement or to enable what they must think are audiences with the mental capacity of a drunken hyena to see what role each candidate is expected to take. (Case in point: Martin, the first to be fired, is 'The Philosopher'. And indeed, just before he got fired, he spouted loads of random African sayings, which did make him seem philosohical. Unfortunately, his staggering intellect was not matched ny his bladder control and his taste in clothes, so he got his arse booted by The Donald. Full recap here. --Ed)

Unfortunately, the NBC dudes appear to have missed the mark with Heidi, who currently is the leading candidate and Project Manager on the show. Realising her good looks obviously mean she has no brains, the male chauvinist pigs over at NBC have gone and labelled her 'The Hottie'. Ooh. I smell a sexual discrimination lawsuit coming up.

"I'm not taking the rap for this one. This wasn't me, Women's Rights Watch! I love women!"

The Task: The two teams have to put on a beachwear fashion show, right from scratch. This means designing their own swimwear. Team Kinetic did okay, putting on a good show, except for Surya who, uhm, well. Take a look for yourself:

"Right, look straight up, holdstomachin holdstomachin it's almost over..."

They could afford all that, but not a wax for Surya? No wonder he's called 'The Hair' over on the NBC website.

The much-promised glimpse of Trump barefoot came when the billionaire walked down the beach, took off his socks, and threw them right onto Concubine #353.

Who Got Fired And Why: Carey, 'The Perfectionist', got axed because he designed a men's bathing suit that bordered on the obscene and that would only appeal to gay men. (And possibly because Carey's gay himself, but that's a topic I'm not touching with a ten foot pole. --Ed)

Overall, The Apprentice didn't do too well with this episode, even with a trip to the Playboy Mansion as a reward for the winning team (featuring the real Hugh Hefner and his three plastic Barbie-doll girlfriends!) and Trump brandishing Carey's bathing suit in the boardroom, but I'm told the third episode was the charm. Stay tuned for the next recaplet coming up real soon, folks. In the meantime, I leave you again with the exit interview, simplified to a single picture:

The Angry Medic Goes To Hospital

2007-02-06T23:13:00.000Z

*pauses to allow gasps, fainting, and flying pigs to take off*

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I, who study in one of the most traditional universities in the world, a university that stuffs you up to your eyeballs with biochemical trivia for the first three years and doesn't let you see the inside of a hospital, a university that tells all its medics "Great job on getting in, mate. Now put that stethoscope away and sit down for a few years", a university that lumps its medical students and its Natural Sciences students together for one half of the medical course, have actually stepped inside a hospital.

*more gasps, more fainting, flying pigs reach stratosphere*

The University, in an attempt to make sure its students don't go insane and perhaps forget that they're doing medicine, has incorporated a patient-contact component into the pre-clinical course called Preparing For Patients. Through the mercy of this component, we clinical-exposure-hungry medics are allowed into the hospital. Once a year.

And so it is that I stepped through the hallowed infamous revolving door of Addenbrooke's Hospital:

"You do not choose the hospital. The hospital chooses you."
--Addenbrooke's Hospital Pantomime 2006

Throughout the course of my PfP placements, I visited a cystic fibrosis ward, interviewed a hospitalised drill sergeant, listened to a Red Cross surgeon who was a doctor for the Taliban in Afghanistan, and got dragged into loads of storage cupboards by hot nurses. (Okay, maybe not that last one. --Editor) And I'm going to blog about each of those experiences. (No, not the storage cupboards! Perverts. --Ed)

(Oh, and after looking into the angry mob of faces that greeted me after my last Medscape post (which, I should add, a few people misunderstood; I was NOT insulting surgeons --Ed) I saw the glares of Medblog Addict, SeaSpray and my Donald Trump action figure staring back at me, reminding me that I am WAY behind on my Apprentice reviews. So during the next few days I'll also be posting up mini-recaps of the episodes so far, leading up to Episode 5 on Sunday.)

But first, taking a cue from sensationalist media *coughFoxNewscough* (and comedian Pablo Francisco --Ed) I leave you with a selection of quotes from my upcoming posts, to preview what's in store:

"All the Taliban really wanted was to restore order to Afghanistan, and after all that, you know, open some hotels and stuff."

"Take it from an old-timer, young 'un...three rules of life. One, no whinging. Two, humour always. And three, always think positive."

"The government's screwing Hinchingbrooke over, and so I've got to come here. It's a hassle, but then again, so's the government."

"I have a great body, I really do. And I could wear that suit." --Donald Trump, referring to a bathing suit of miniscule proportions.

And, back by popular demand, a smattering of quotes to once again illustrate what a great centre of intellectual might Cambridge is:

"IS THAT A BUTT?!" --screamed across the Dissection Room by a medic upon seeing a rectal examination model for the first time.

"Is it just me, or does your uterus also look like an oesophagus?" --one (male) medic to another, during a Histology microscopy session.

"You know how every lecturer tells you 'Back in the day, we used to have to learn so much more than you do now'? Well if you keep going back in time, this means you eventually arrive at a point where ALL the medical students were bloody GENIUSES. And that's not true, because they were idiots too. Just like you." --a lecturer trying to be sympathetic.

"Oh, you're screwed." --a visiting doctor, when asked how the recent changes in the medical profession (read: MMC) would affect us differently from medical students in his time.

Says it all, really.

The Towering Inferno (That Is A Surgeon's Ego)

2007-02-02T12:55:00.000Z

During my last hospital visit, we were sitting in the lobby waiting for the surgeon in charge to come get us. Assorted medical personnel were walking by, and lots and lots of scrubs. After a while I noticed you could actually tell what sort of doctor they were simply by the way they walked. So I wrote a Medscape post on the subject. And then I left it there because I had other stuff to post about (things that were obviously more urgent, like Cambridge students riding whale skeletons and emergency physicians predicting we were all going to graduate to become drunken incompetents. --Editor)

Then I went back yesterday, expecting the post to have the usual smattering of comments under it, most probably from a few surgeons calling me dirty names, and I see 74 comments under the article. Many were from people voicing their support of this particular medical stereotype, and a few surgeons (and people who had worked with surgeons) speaking out against it, including Sid Schwab of Surgeonsblog fame. (There was, of course, the odd commenter calling me an idiot, one of whom misunderstood exactly who I was insulting when I said we medical students were "ridiculously well dressed", but I'm used to people calling me an idiot. In fact I think it started when, in the labour room, the gynaecologist delivering me slapped my back and said "Breathe, you idiot!" --Ed)

For the record, I have worked with many great (and very humble) surgeons, and also some downright arrogant ones. I harbour dreams of becoming a surgeon myself (though after this fiasco, there probably isn't a single surgeon out there anymore who's willing to teach me. Sigh. --Ed). Do go over and read the post for yourself, and drop a comment if you have feelings on the matter. Some of those comments have been very insightful, especially to a lecture-theatre-bred medstudent brat like me, and I will put a few up here soon. In the meantime though, I'm off to Newcastle to meet with med students who actually get to see the inside of a hospital in their first FEW WEEKS of med school. (Bastards. --Ed) I just hope my train doesn't get attacked by Red Indians.

Snapshots Of Hell: The Cambridge Round-Up, Week 1: Of Whale Skeletons, Jobless Linguists and Teetotaling Emergency Physicians

2007-01-30T01:34:00.000Z

So ends the first week of the new term in Cambridge! And I've only missed 6 lectures by oversleeping (out of the 7 or so that have been held so far), failed one audition, pulled one quadriceps muscle (hey, House has made hobbling around on one leg sexy again --Ed) and been called part of "the worst batch in living history" by my Director Of Studies. Oh, it's going to be a fantastic year.

Join me for a quick look at the week that was in Cambridge:

Jesuans Get Back In The Saddle (Of A Whale This Time)
(In case you're wondering - and I know you are - 'Jesuan' is the term given to students of Jesus College to sound cool. And to give our cheerleading teams something to use to refer to us when we play against those arrogant Johnians. Not to be confused with a certain religious order. --Ed)

Last year a drunken fresher at Jesus made headlines when she was caught riding the extremely tempting horse that lies in First Court (so named because it's the first court you see as you walk into Jesus. Clever eh? --Ed) and is part of the College's attempt to distinguish itself by littering its ancient grounds with completely unrelated pieces of modern art. Since then, great advances in Jesuan academic and intellectual performance have been made (believed to have been stimulated by the Chaplain screening 'Kind Hearts and Coronets' on cinema night, and the Master striding up and down in his long black robe for no other apparent reason than to strike terror into the hearts of unproductive students --Ed) and this year, we see the result at last.

Jesus students have increased their tastes. Graduated to a whole new level of culture, class, and taste.

This time they rode a whale.

This whale, to be more precise. Outside the Biochemistry lecture theatre is a huge replica of a finback whale. After a particularly inspiring chav-themed bop, two students somehow scaled the walls of the Zoology building and found themselves drunk, alone and cold, with only a large whale skeleton and group of rather angry security guards for company.

What a great year for Jesuan achievement.

Linguists Lament Portuguese Pull-out
Driven both by a need for international publicity and a Patricia-Hewitt-like drive to save money, Cambridge University has decided to axe Portuguese from next year onwards. Whilst the Portuguese Ambassador scrambles to the Brazilian Embassy to get other nations together to try and knock some sense into our dons, linguists start to realise that maybe they should've done another degree that gave them more job security, as this sketch from Varsity illustrates:

(Rather like MMC, innit? --Ed)

It's Official: Cambridge Students Are Drunken Idiots
Here in Cambridge we students are subject to intense pressure. Just because we come to Cambridge our lecturers (many of whom step out of their labs once a week and have been wearing the same shirt since they made their first breakthrough in 1969) expect insanely high amounts of work from us, and the worst thing is that some of us actually DO work that hard. For the rest of us normal folk, tension release comes in many forms. Some of us blog (*cough* --Ed), some of us take to the stage (*cough cough* --Ed) but mostly we just drink. Or at least says Addenbrooke's Consultant Emergency Physician Dr Boyle, who adds that hazards for drunken students involve "falling off bikes, falling into the River Cam and having unprotected sex". He also says student binge drinking "sets the ground for alcoholism in future".

So I'm going to be an alcoholic doctor with only 3 years of clinical exposure instead of the usual 5 enjoyed by medics from other universities.

Why am I here again?

In The Spirit Of Free Speech

2007-01-27T23:37:00.000Z

Where do you cross the line?

I have spoken about free speech before. It is at the very heart of blogging. Every blogger, indeed every person in the world who posts an opinion online, takes shelter under its umbrella. In this country you can say what you want, when you want. It is at the centre of the UK's tolerant nature. It is what allows Dr Rant to spout off as he does, Dr Crippen to snipe away at healthcare inadequacies and Dr Grumble to, well, grumble.

So it naturally follows that others will use freedom of speech to their own advantage. Comedians, for example, take all sorts of liberties when they make ethnic, political, and offensive jokes. Take a look at this very short clip of comedian Russell Peters:

Would you consider that offensive?

Some do. In fact some are totally against it. But yet comedians still make jokes like that. It's because of free speech that they can.

Recently I contributed a post to another blog. Readers of this blog will know that I like to poke fun at everything and everyone, very often myself. And I like my fun with Photoshop. But some people were offended. Things turned dramatic. I removed the offending post and made my apologies. I did not mean any disrespect or malice. Some people liked the post and appreciated my sense of humour. Others did not.

I guess free speech has its consequences for all of us. Every blogger who presses the 'Publish' button is risking these consequences every day. Free speech makes some famous, and allows them to express themselves. But for others, its consequences can be not so pleasant, as HospitalPhoenix, Carmelo Alongi and myself have found out.

But that is a risk all of us have to take sometimes. To speak our minds and make our thoughts known. If we had not, human civilisation as we know it today would not exist.

And so it is in the spirit of free speech, knowing that I will not be lawfully reproached, that I pass on Dr Crippen's request for readers to take a look at the petition to sack Patricia Hewitt.

Donald Trump wants to fire Patsy

Free speech. It's your right to use it. Just don't step on the wrong toes.

He Did NOT Just Say That! (With Bonus HospitalPhoenix Update!)

2007-01-25T15:17:00.000Z

Emperor George W. Bush

Common sense dictates that the more often you post on your blog, the more readers you have. It follows from that that when your readership increases, you should post more in order to keep those readers. Unfortunately, common sense is not so common, and especially so for a brain-damaged medic living in the bubble of isolation that is Cambridge University. So to make up for the lack in long posts, I've decided to shamelessly rip off Calavera's 'Heard Around The Hospital' idea and leave you with a few quotes before my next long post, which should be up sometime soon. For now, sit back and relax, as I give you an insider's glimpse into the staggering intellectual genius of Cambridge University:

"It's not part of the course. How can you expect me to know it?" --a Cambridge student to his supervisor, when asked if he had any common sense.

"All I took out of that lecture was cervical mucus." --another medic, after a particularly stimulating lecture on Human Reproduction.

"There are 3 possible combinations for this bond. For two bonds there are obviously 3x3 possible combinations, and 3x3 = 10." --our Biochemistry lecturer during a 9am lecture after a particularly long night.

"These poisons are poisonous." --official safety guideline in a Biochemistry Practical Instruction Sheet.

"The menopausal woman is an unstable oestrogen starved woman who is responsible for untold misery of alcoholism, drug addiction, divorce and broken homes" --our Medical Sociology lecturer, unintentionally giving us too much information on his love life.

"You are legally entitled to keep up to one third of a body indefinitely." --an anatomy demonstrator.

"Then we have the rectum...we don't really use that here in Britain." --our Pharmacology lecturer, during a lecture on sites of drug administration.

(Just in case any of you were wondering, no, I didn't take any of this off Facebook, you louts. --Editor.)*

*(Okay, maybe one or two. --Ed)

P.S. He probably thinks I'm stalking him by now, but everyone's favourite phoenix HospitalPhoenix has lived up to his name and started another blog, HP does MMC. He details his trials and tribulations of applying for a job in the fine warm mess the government has plopped out of its rear end onto us all, MMC. Go over and leave a supportive comment before, as he puts it in his own words, his blog is "culled by the 'delete' button if it all gets too much".

Knock On Nurses, Bring On Curses

2007-01-21T01:57:00.000Z

Nurses are funny people. And I mean that in both senses of the word. Sometimes you have funny ha-ha nurses who make you laugh. And sometimes you have nurses who act funny for no apparent reason, like the one in this story. I personally have had experiences with many nurses (most of whom are hot and obviously wanted to drag me into the nearest store cupboard and do a Grey's Anatomy on me. It can be tough, being a hot young doctor in a hospital with a nursing college right behind it... --Editor). The most memorable one was with a nurse in an Intensive Care Unit who was butch and tough and looked like Dr Bailey would if she were a nurse:

But when the time came when her patients needed her, she demonstrated real care and diligence. She would even skip lunch and stay on at the station when poncy doctors dropped their clipboards and headed for the cafeteria. And she was nice to me. She'd tell me stuff the consultants wouldn't repeat for me and give me pointers before my fat was fried by said consultants.

I also knew she had a tough life. It showed. But she fought it and kept going. I met her during an attachment back in the days before medical school. She gave me my first glimpse into the hell that is medicine.

Recently a family member of mine had to have surgery. I was sitting in the waiting room trying to be the strong voice of reassurance to my family. I was, after all, a highly educated medic, dammit. But all I managed was a bad impression of a castrato singer trying not to sound like a castrato singer.

Luckily I was rescued by a nurse. Read the whole story on Medscape's med student blog The Differential. Again, do leave a friendly comment if you like the post. I need to convince my Medscape bosses that I'm more than just a goofy smile on the blog...