Doctor doctor
Today I had my first visit to a general practitioner's [GP] practice.
I had to wear formal clothes because they tell you to be all professional when you see patients, so you can't even wear jeans, let alone tee-shirts etc. I wore the nice white shirt with blue stripes that Abeer's mum got me, along with black trousers and a black tie.
We go in pairs. My partner, Aisling [that's pronounced 'Ash-ling'] can drive and she offered to drive us there. We set out right after the last lecture of the day which finished at 13:00, drove towards Sunderland, which is where the practice is located. It's about a half-hour's drive away, but we got lost trying to find the bloody street that it's on and it took us about another half hour to finally get there. We got there sharp at 14.30, which is when we were supposed to be in.
Anyways. The whole feeling of sitting in with a GP was quite surreal, as Aisling rightly put it. But that feeling went away after a strong cup of coffee and a nice homemade carrot-lettuce sandwich.
Most of the patients we observed were children, with their parents of course. Between taking notes of the GP's diagnosis and asking her questions about anything we didn't understand, I found the time to smile at the children and simply marvel at their innocence. Our doctor was real nice and she even let us auscultate [listen with a stethoscope] the chest of one of the children.
Then we both got to interview a single patient on our own, without our doctor supervising.
A couple of patients refused to let us sit in the room while they consulted the doctor. Fair enough - we just went to the reception and helped the receptionists arrange forms and prescriptions.
Even though we left a little late, we left satisfied with the amount of experience we'd gained in those three or so hours. I actually wanted to stay longer and observe more patients.
I'm simply blown away by medicine. It's da bomb, man!
I had to wear formal clothes because they tell you to be all professional when you see patients, so you can't even wear jeans, let alone tee-shirts etc. I wore the nice white shirt with blue stripes that Abeer's mum got me, along with black trousers and a black tie.
We go in pairs. My partner, Aisling [that's pronounced 'Ash-ling'] can drive and she offered to drive us there. We set out right after the last lecture of the day which finished at 13:00, drove towards Sunderland, which is where the practice is located. It's about a half-hour's drive away, but we got lost trying to find the bloody street that it's on and it took us about another half hour to finally get there. We got there sharp at 14.30, which is when we were supposed to be in.
Anyways. The whole feeling of sitting in with a GP was quite surreal, as Aisling rightly put it. But that feeling went away after a strong cup of coffee and a nice homemade carrot-lettuce sandwich.
Most of the patients we observed were children, with their parents of course. Between taking notes of the GP's diagnosis and asking her questions about anything we didn't understand, I found the time to smile at the children and simply marvel at their innocence. Our doctor was real nice and she even let us auscultate [listen with a stethoscope] the chest of one of the children.
Then we both got to interview a single patient on our own, without our doctor supervising.
A couple of patients refused to let us sit in the room while they consulted the doctor. Fair enough - we just went to the reception and helped the receptionists arrange forms and prescriptions.
Even though we left a little late, we left satisfied with the amount of experience we'd gained in those three or so hours. I actually wanted to stay longer and observe more patients.
I'm simply blown away by medicine. It's da bomb, man!