Naked Truth Blog » Excitement

A Cartoon Guide to Becoming a Doctor

Dom — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 10:35:44 +0000

Reading A Cartoon Guide to Becoming a Doctor is no substitute for actually going to medical school but may provide some tongue-in-cheek towards getting through once you are there. This cartoon is written by an anonymous medical student, now doctor, about the trials and tribulations of rotations, examinations and personal life, occasionally featuring guest submissions. The byline claims that that it is ‘Lessons on the medical training process from somebody with absolutely no artistic talent’ which is a little unfair. The drawing is basic but totally coherent. The writing is quite US-orientated, but it translates quite well transatlantically once you work out what a ‘resident’ doesn’t just mean someone who lives somewhere. Recent highlights include a skeleton draft of a personal statement for applying to medical school which probably really isn’t that helpful. Have a look at the cartoon here, or if you fancy adding your own submission, email the author here.

MD Life

Dom — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:43:21 +0000

Medicine is a well-regarded profession, of which it is a great privilege to be a part. However, as with anything else there can be downsides. These are spelled out anonymously on MD Life Sucks. This is a riff on FMyLife and similar websites whose anonymity and wide reach enables frustrated people to complain about minutiae in their lives which vex them to a small audience scattered across the globe. MD Life Sucks is, naturally, targeted at medical doctors with gripes. My favourite so far is this one:

I made the mistake of buying an MD license plate. Now, every time I go to the mechanic for a simple oil change, they find something new wrong with my car.

This person doesn’t quite have all the problems their patients probably have, I imagine.

More Medicine on Twitter

Dom — Tue, 25 May 2010 15:54:43 +0000

Elsevier News now has a presence of Twitter. It would be possible to autotweet every single issue of a journal or even every article individually, but it would not be possible to keep up with the feed in a meaningful way. It is doubtful that this would really help any clinician or research in either actively searching for evidence or keeping up to date in their practice. Instead, a more focussed view is taken. There hasn’t yet been much more interest in Twitter from Big Pharma. This may change in the future. Health Business Blog wrote one post a few months ago, and another shortly afterwards following progress. The limitation with microblogging’s focus on Twitter remains that it is a centralised service vulnerable to downtime due to too much traffic or potential cyber attacks. There is not yet any great solution, although Backupify is available to backup tweets and Google has rolled up its improved Twitter search this week.

UKFPO error 2010

Dom — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 12:38:32 +0000

North-East Thames is a competitive Foundation School and a system error may have directly affected the applications of 34 students. Six of these students may be in an entirely different foundation school due to their not receiving sufficient points. It is possible that this may have a knock-on effect for other students who may be displaced from their first choice of North-East Thames to a different Foundation School. UKFPO have been impressively quick in recognising and responding to the problem.

SENT ON BEHALF OF PROFESSOR DEREK GALLEN

This email has been sent to: Postgraduate Deans, Foundation School Directors, Foundation School Managers, Rules Group Members, Heads of Medical Schools, Medical Schools Council, UKFPO, Medical Students Board, and BMA Medical Students Committee

For information please find below the statement sent to the BMA news regarding the recent quartile score administrative error which affected a small number of students from Barts and the London Medical School.

North East Thames Foundation School Apologises for

Foundation Programme 2010 Recruitment Administrative Error

Applicants to the Foundation Programme 2010 were able to log into their online accounts on Friday, 19 February to see a breakdown of their application scores. A small proportion of students from Barts and the London Medical School were surprised to find that the academic quartile scores provided to them by Barts were different from those they saw on the online application system.

Investigations at the weekend and on Monday revealed that there were process and administration issues at both Barts and the London Medical School and North East Thames Foundation School (NETFS).

Before potential applicants to the Foundation Programme can enrol online, medical schools must provide details of eligible students to their local foundation school by a set deadline in order for them to be pre-loaded onto the system. This year, Barts and the London were unable to provide their quartile rankings by the deadline because some results for students re-sitting exams were only available after this deadline. In order to ensure that their students could enrol at the same time as all other students, all Barts students were uploaded into the application system with a provisional score of 34, the lowest quartile ranking, with an agreement they would be amended when the final data came through from the medical school.

When the medical school sent through the final scores on a spreadsheet, administrative staff at the North East Thames Foundation School input the new scores, with the exception of one page of the spreadsheet which had been missed in error. The result is that 34 students whose academic quartile scores were on the missing spreadsheet page are lower than they should have been. The scores of six of these students, who didn’t get into their first choice foundation school, will be reviewed and NETFS will work with other foundation schools to place these doctors in the school they should have been allocated to as vacancies arise from withdrawals and finals fails.

All of those students affected have been contacted by NETFS and informed of the steps being taken to ensure they receive the help and support they need.

Professor Derek Gallen, National Director of the UK Foundation Programme Office, who runs the national Foundation Programme recruitment process on behalf of the four UK health departments said,

“As soon as our student advisors contacted us on Saturday, we began looking into score discrepancies as a matter of urgency with the online hosts, NETFS and Barts and the London. The UKFPO has asked that all foundation schools cooperate with NETFS to help those affected by this error. Of the 28 students that got into their first choice school, but with a lower programme allocation than they may have otherwise received; the UKFPO has asked that foundation schools give these students preferential allocations for their F2 year.”

Dr Michael Glynn, Foundation School Director for NETFS, said:

“We apologise unreservedly for this error. This has not been an error made by the UKFPO, or by the online application system. It was human error, plain and simple, between the medical school and local foundation school. This does not excuse it, certainly, and NEFTS will do everything it can to help those students affected. We are also working with Barts and the London to ensure this does not happen again.

Regards,

Professor Derek Gallen

National Director

UK Foundation Programme Office

For all you Ven Diagram lovers out there…

debs — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:08:37 +0000

Who knew that they could be soooo much fun. Check this out: http://thisisindexed.com/

UBMS Comedy Revue 2009

Dom — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 09:56:02 +0000

Spending all day learning about disease and death can be distressing at times. Freud characterised humour one of the mature ways the psyche deals with unpleasant situations. Unsurprisingly, many medical schools have a Comedy Revue. After the success of playing Edinburgh Fringe Festival over the summer, the University of Birmingham Medical School Comedy Revue will return with their brand new show to play Birmingham for three nights only: Thursday 12th March, Friday 13th March and Saturday 14th March 2009. All proceeds will be going to the NSPCC and Oxfam. The pleasantly inoffensive trailer can be found by clicking here.

A lot less weird than the previous year’s trailer, anyway.

My Virtual Bookcase

Jason — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 12:32:47 +0000

I use my student consult nearly every day.

Why you ask…well im lazy

i do not want to carry a bag full of books.

my library never has a book i want, one that i know

and im normally using a PC when not physically on the ward…..

all of my books are on student consult….lifes too hard not to use consult

Jay

Something that I saw on my way to work this morning…

debs — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:17:25 +0000

Morning all. Well the Victoria line was down this morning and so I had to hike my way across London in stupid heels. Just when I thought that the day was going to go badly I saw this… Yes it’s a lego Tutankhamun being transported on the back of a lorry! I know! I did a cartoon eye rubbing when I saw it then got out my phone to take a sneeky picture. Anyway it cheered me up and put a spring in my step and I thought you might also like to see it

THE EXCITEMENT MOUNTS AT NAKED TOWERS!

admin — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:54:14 +0000

We are all so excited here at Naked Towers about our site coming to life… and it shows! These are bonafide reactions of the team when told that the site is now live – these are not the faces of actors!