DundeeChest 3.0

Archive for the ‘Phase 2’ Category

Eat your greens, Old Ma DundeeChest used to tell me. She was right.

I suspect that the chances of developing COPD are more influenced by smoking…

I’ve come up with an idea. 60 second screencasts with a snippet of information to watch when you have, well, 60 seconds spare. I can make an RSS feed so they can be linked with iTunes, or we can keep them locked away behind the firewall. What do you think?

Here’s the first one, about a CXR I saw in clinic yesterday.

Not to upstage our own PRN vodcast team, who you really ought to go visit asap, the Podmedics podcasts are worth a watch. There’s a huge back catalog to go through, but the most recent one is on Pneumonia. Apart from the sea sickness inducing presentation graphics, and the slightly monotone delivery, it all makes sense, and is worth a watch if you’ve forgotten the bons mots we shared back in October….

After a short delay, we have now received the feedback from the phase 2 students for the respiratory block. 69 of the second year responded, which is a little disappointing, but the comments have proved to be very valuable, both negative and positive.

A more comprehensive response will follow, but for now, the main issues raised by the students are.

1. The order of the lectures is not always helpful.
2. The ward based teaching is too variable, with some students getting a lot out of it, and some not.
3. The students like the study guide (which I had thought you all wouldn’t, TBH), and want paper copies of it earlier.

We will be focussing on these issues primarily for next year, so thank you for the feedback. I was particularly encouraged that there were no complaints about lack of formative assessment in the block, in stark contrast to last year!!!

Positives were numerous, but the top 3

1. The ABG tutorial went down a storm, and Dr Stretton’s delivery particularly. In my defence, I did *write* the tutorial…. 😉
2. The MDT was well liked, but I totally accept that the roles should be rotated for each case
3. Changing private study into small group sessions was universally liked, with no-one asking for more private teaching time.

DundeeChest was well liked, and most of you preferred it to BB, apart from one person who prefers the BB discussion forums.

Better late than never? The week three study guide has been around the houses, but it’s finally available here.

The chest block endeth. It’s gone well, from my end at least.

Tomorrow is the end of block feedback session. I strongly encourage you to come along, press some buttons, and let us know your unabashed feedback on the block. We’ll ask you to answer some questions, then we’ll open the floor for you to ask us some questions.

The other thing to mention is for group B2 – I am supposed to be teaching you on the wards at 2. Unfortunately I have to meet a family of a patient at 4, so can we bring the teaching forward to 1? It also means that you’ll get away early, it is POETS day, after all.

TCF

I have no idea why people are unable to download this content from BlackBoard. I sent the material to the medical school on the 23rd September, but people are unable to get at it.

Therefore, here it is for download here:

Yr 2 ROCE booklet 2010

Yr 2 RoCE student instructions 2010

Yr 3 ROCE booklet 2010

I have asked the medical school to put the files in a more visible space, but for now, you can get at them here.

This message is for group B2.

Due to a massive cock-up in ward staff communication, I seem to have lost you. I was timetabled to teach you on the ward today at 2. I was called away urgently to see a CF patient in the clinic, so ‘phoned ahead to the ward to ask the ward staff to allocate patients for you to see. Then some 3rd years turned up for a different teaching session, were allocated your patients, and the junior doctors sent you away.

The juniors told me you were coming back at 3, so I taught the 3rd years, and waited for you. By 3:45 you had not turned up again, so I’ve given up and come back to my office.

Most unfortunate, all in all. I suspect you got the weekend itch, which is fair enough.

So, we should try to reschedule for next week.

Let me know when you’re free.

TCF

The MDT sessions seem to be going well enough. There’s been subtle iterations through the week, and tomorrow I might even manage to fit everything in. A couple of you have given some positive feedback about the MDT sessions – I think they have gone well. Most of the decisions have been in line with what happened in real life, which must be a good thing.

I have been disappointed that so few people have read through the information I have provided on “What to tell patients with Lung Cancer” as provided by the BTS. This useful document gives data on what kind of life expectancy lung cancer patients can expect, with and without treatment. We don’t have this data locally, so I can’t really tell you what goes on in Tayside.

On a more positive note, the staff on the ward and in East Block have commented to me that the second years who have come down to the department, been on ward rounds, come to clinics, visited the MDT, have been keen, enthusiastic, and interested. This is a very positive reflection on those of you who have come down, so well done. Someone even came to the real MDT today, to see how it really happens.

Dr Lockhart has given me his 2010 update to his microbiology lecture, so this is now on the microbiology resource page. All the materials from last week’s ITA are now up on the Basic Sciences ITA page too. This week’s MDT materials will go up on line when I get the digital copies from Richard.

Next week I have timetabled a lecture on Respiratory Illness and Oxygen Therapy. This lecture is one I usually leave blank, to give you the choice of what I talk about – last year the choice was Respiratory Illness and Oxygen Therapy. So I’m open to suggestions – what would you like me to talk about on Thursday of next week? I will use some of the time to talk about the RoCE exam, I would quite like to talk about oxygen therapy at some point, but I’m in your hands.

The MDT sessions are going well, I think. Monday’s session was a little disjointed, as it was the first ever session, leading to the oncologists having little to do until the MDT itself. To fix this, I wrote some cases for the oncologists to go through in the first 45 minutes, and they seemed to get more out of the session because of it.

Much of the discussion revolves around prognosis, and the benefits of giving chemotherapy to patients, in terms of prolongation of life, and quality of life. Disappointingly no-one had read the information I provided on “What to tell a patient with lung cancer”, which answers much of these questions. The Lung Cancer Resource Page also has on it other interactive resources about lung cancer staging, lung cancer cases, patient journeys etc.

For tomorrow’s session:

1. I will be 5 to 10 minutes late as I have to speak to the 3rd years before coming to the session. So have an extra 5 minutes in bed.
2. I am in the process of updating the materials, particularly for the chest physician group. The new materials can be made available to everyone at the end of the week.