Clinical Skills, Snowdon and Surgery

Hello! I’ve had a busy 2 weeks since I last wrote a post!

We had a week of clinical skills teaching, which was great! Sian and Jayne, 2 of the clinical skills teachers from Cardiff, came up to teach us all of the clinical skills that we need to learn this year. The skills we covered included suturing, cannulation, scrubbing up for surgery, arterial blood gases, catheterisation and lot more besides. It was fairly intense learning each skill after another in such a short space of time, but it was fun to do something a bit more practical. I am hoping to have the chance to do these skills on actual patients this year, probably in my 4 weeks of hospital blocks, which is scary but very exciting! There are also lots of opportunities to do clinical skills in the GP surgery. I’ve already done lots of blood pressures, urinalysis, taking temperatures and even taking blood!

To top off that busy week, on the Saturday I decided to climb Snowdon with some of my friends who are up in North Wales for their 8 week hospital placements! It was a really beautiful day.. sunny but not too hot, which was perfect for hiking. We started in Llanberis and headed up the Llanberis path. It was pretty busy , but it was nice as it wasn’t too steep. For most of the way the path followed the route of the train which heads up to the top. There were really fantastic views all the way up, although at the very top we ended up in the clouds! We decided to head down the Snowdon Ranger path for a change of scenery on the way back, which was a little longer but a lot quieter, and took us to a pub at the end where we had a well-deserved hot chocolate! Overall the hike took about 8 hours, and I had an exhausting but brilliant day!

Another amazing thing I’ve done recently is spend a day in Maxillofacial surgery. It was a placement arranged by my GP, who knows one of the surgeons. The Maxillofacial surgeons are very specialised, as they are trained as both doctors and dentists. It was incredibly interesting, and the first time I’ve ever seen surgery! They were doing a huge 12 hour operation which involved removing a large skin cancer from a man’s face, removing several lymph nodes in his neck and doing a live skin graft using skin from his thigh. It was very delicate and fascinating to watch. My GP has also got several other one day placements with other doctors lined up for me this year, which I am really excited for!

Ella x