So picking up from the last blog, Wednesday morning I went to K&C hospital for the Advanced Kidney Care Clinic and the X-ray meeting. First off was the meeting. Apart from seeing some X-rays I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this. With the X-rays projected in front of us, the gathered Doctors (roughly 10) would discuss each patient in turn to gain advice/a second opinion on the suitable treatment. Some of it was a little over my head when looking at the X-rays as you would imagine but I learnt a lot and really enjoyed it. It was great to see the Doctors working in that way and really makes you appreciate their level of expertise!
I went straight from the meeting to the clinic where I joined Dr Abass. It lasted about 3 hours and we saw roughly 12 patients. Dr Abass discussed with the patients how they were, checking their current medications and discussing the next steps. I learnt an awful lot here too, and how the scientific knowledge you study and gain from textbooks actually works at the patient level. There was a range of patients, some deciding against dialysis, some being prepared for it and even someone being prepared for a transplant. It was much like how you would speak to your GP on a visit, but obviously more specific. Again very enjoyable and I feel like I really picked up a lot from this particular experience.
Thursday morning I went in for a Biopsy meeting. Lasting 2 hours it was very similar to the X-ray meeting but looking at patient biopsy’s instead. Once again some of the detail was a little over my head, but due to doing tissue preparation and staining in one of my modules last year I understood much more, making it easier to follow and understand the advice that was being given.
I spent Friday and all of the following week working on the data at the Hospital. On the Tuesday I went to William Harvey Hospital in Ashford (as this is where Dr Doulton was for the day). All the data manipulation was finished by Friday meaning we could hand it to the statistician to work his magic and give us back all the figures that we need to analyse the data and put into words what it means.
Monday morning I will be joining Dr Doulton on his ward round which I think will be a real eye opener into the patient care side of things and allow me to appreciate how the science and medicine works in reality.