Clinical placement begins

New place, new hospital, new staff, new patients... right now I'm mixture of excitement, nerves, anxiety and more excitement, lol. Just a brief run through of my first few days is as follows. Although I've fleetingly visited my supervisor before the Christmas holidays, I assumed it would be easy to find. On my first official first day, I know I'm due up to the academic area - simple enough... until I get to this sign...

Wait a second... which academic area did I go to before? What it surgery or medicine? Crap! *Silent scream!*

As I didn't want to be late on my first day, I did what any aspiring medic would do. I silently did a nursery rhyme dip. That's right "Ip dip do..." and I choose Surgery. Thankfully it was the right place :) I arrived to find that the offices have now been switched after the Christmas holidays so what was previously the shared office space was now a new diagnostic wet lab. I decided to have bit of a wander around to find my supervisors office. After about 5 minutes, I come across some familiar looking people. Success! With my supervisors office successfully located, I found my allocated desk for the year and settled down. I then met the IT department, consisting of Paul, John and another Paul who are a bunch of really lovely guys. They took the time to help me setup my IT account and provide me with software (SPSS, Endnote etc) that I would need for my study, which was really thoughtful of them :)

With that done I went for a bit of a wander around the hospital to get my bearings. I visited the vascular studies Unit (VSU) where I'll be based and met some of the hospital staff I'll be working with. With the VSU situated between other departments such as audiology, I wasn't surprised to find a number of posters informing me of risks, illnesses and what not. On the way into the VSU, this poster really caught my eye...

Maybe I'll teach myself sign language at some stage. It's a pretty cool thing to be able to do, plus the audiology department is literally next door if help is needed :)

After a few days I got the opportunity to get scrubbed in and watch a AAA bypass surgery and have a go at blood sampling (for one of the post-doc studies) during the operation. Due to rules camera phones etc are not allowed into the actual theatre, well not at least in Prof's theatre and I'm not about to argue with the man! Trust me when I say it is an awesome thing to watch. Scary but still awesome! Also the smell of freshly cauterised human flesh takes a bit of getting used to :(

Aren't hospital scrubs so fashionable? Do you think blue is my colour? lol

I also got shown the clinic room in the VSU I’ll be using to see patients. I waited until the staff member showing me around left to attend a phone call, before I took the pictures, lol. Although a large room, half it seems to be used for filing documents etc whilst the other half is used to store excess equipment until it is needed. Clearly tidying up is not a priority - I really had to keep a tight lid on my OCD and stop myself from tidying up the papers whilst the staff member was out of the room. Argh!

Looks like a graveyard for unloved equipment, lol. And yes that IS a treadmill in the corner.

So yes, this place will be my home away from home for the coming year. Fingers crossed it’ll be a good one :)