Easy money

Well I've successfully managed to procrastinate quite effectively this week. I DID get to do my neuro quiz 2 last night at midnight, and my score of 60% will unfortunately have to do. I spent too much time on the ventricles and not enough on the lobes. Fark.

As far as the research project at work - my contact has suggested I email my uni(s) to see if I can get any academic credit for it. She sent me some examples of the sort of article I could produce with the same sort of epidemiological data from work. It looks achievable. My only concern is the examples have three or more authors and I'm on my lonesome. Hmmm....

The vegan thing has been going remarkably well. In fact, I don't think I realized I was already half-way there anyway. I'm also trying to reduce the amount of soda I drink, especially energy drinks.

I worked last night on overtime. I got paid 12.5 hours at double-time and literally did half an hours "work" which involved driving to the next town only to be cancelled due to a closer available ambulance. Nice. The rest of the time I watched tv (I'm starting to like the mind-numbing experience of watching tv again - I must break this habit before it forms), did my quiz, and slept. :)

I tried to study before the quiz but my brain was not functioning properly. I just thought "stuff it" and attempted it as I was running out of time limit. Oh well, at least I know they will be easy grades to pick up in the final exam.

So time to break my study drought and return to the books.

FA Organ Systems Review

I got my First Aid for the Basic Sciences General Principles two weeks ago, and my FA for the Basic Sciences Organs Systems arrived two days ago. I didn't get these two books intially because of the bad reviews on Amazon, but I have to say - I'm loving them!

I'm sure the second editions, when they hurry up and release them, will address the issues and I wish they would release an errata like they do for FA for the USMLE Step 1, but I can cope with them how they are.

For me, the visual lay-out is important. It needs to flow and be organised like the way I like my mind to be organised. I have spoken about the importance of gestalting before.

Anyway, I love them. I used FA Step 1 all the time. I almost never use the Kaplan versions "MedEssentials" due to the clunky lay-out.

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I've done a little more work on the research project this morning at work, so I'm happy with how that is travelling - nice and stress-free. I wonder if I can make it into the professional magazine we have called "Response" by Paramedics Australasia and whether that would be good enough as a "published" article for my residency applications as a start. For my Masters I will have to do something bigger and better but this will be an excellent learning opportunity and at the very least it will help me next year when I get to that stage.

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Pretty much loving life right now. This helped me put things in perspective this morning:

Enjoy....

New plan works well

Well it was amazing what I accomplished yesterday after implementing my new study plan. It certainly helped me keep on-track and not get distracted doing other things.

Last night, after all my readigs for the day were done, and my eye-balls were tired, I was able to watch a bit of TV on the couch completely guilt-free! My house is still nice and clean and organised(-ish) and things are going great.

This morning I went for a run because I know I have enoug time for today's readings afterwards, although I am back at work which makes my study time a little unpredicatable for the rest of this week!

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My dog escaped again this morning but thankfully he seems to now always go to my neighbours house at the end of the street. She is retired and often sits on the bench in her front yard so I guess he reckons that's a pretty good place to go for company. He escaped by pushing out a front window (I have no front fence) which I only left open by about 5cm for airflow. It's one of those ones you wind out on like a bike-chain type thing. I hope he doesn't decide he can push it out from the fully closed position too!

The poor thing. I hope he can wait until I can have a second dog soon.

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I have managed to take my second step towrds this research project by emailing the grant people at the government. Apparently I need to register my profile on their system first.

Research day

Tuesdays on my schedule are research days. I attended my first Journal Club at med school. It wasn't as painful as I'd predicted, and it is really good practice to go through these articles as a group under the guidance of two experts.

One of my former classmates is ahead of me and is in her clinical modules. I heard they added a research block and she mentioned her clinical research project in the class today. It looks like I'll be doing a number of research projects in the very near future of my career. After this post I will work more on my current project proposal.

There is something about adding to the human knowledge-bank that is extremely appealing, and even more  so when it is about helping sick people. Today's article was about Alzheimer Disease and it feels amazing to be among doctors and clinical research scientists that are part of a human effort to combat disease. Humans, as a race, do some many things wrong, but I feel more optimistic when I think about the things we do right, like advances in medicine, science, technology, and space exploration! (Been watching too much Star Trek lately....)

Research

So I've been in contact with the fairly young research and evaluation department (R+E Dept) at my work. I have been thinking for awhile I should try and get involved in some sort of project and preferably have something published to help boost my job potentials for when I'm a newly-minted doctor. The R+E Dept was extremely helpful and have encouraged me to do my own little project! Eek! The lady I spoke to also suggested that I use the project as the one I need to do to complete my Masters next year. I thought the gap was too long, but when I started reading through all the paperwork and deadlines for research grants etc, it's really not at all. I'll keep you posted with how I go and what I'm going to look at, but I think I have a pretty good idea how to tie in my three worlds of ambulance, in-hospital medicine/primary health care, and international health. Exciting!

Another thing she said is that there are 17 people in my ambulance service currenlty doing their PhDs! Holey-moley! It was about 2 years ago the first EVER paramedic got his PhD in a paramedic-related field. Boy, how things have changed since we transitioned into university-based training (for the old on-the-job model). This is encouraging news for an academic that likes to remain clinical like myself. Geez I'd love to be a doctor in the ambulance service....

Other update - my boss quit. I am now the longest serving member of my ambulance station at just 3.5 years, and the most experienced paramedic at 4 years. Geez. I don't have to worry about any big bosses reading this when I say I do not want to take over the newly vacant position. I'm already studing med, my Masters, I'm the Health and Safety Rep, and, oh yeh, sometimes I do have something that looks like a LIFE! The position does indeed pay well/better but it would annihilate my downtime and that wouldn't be good for my studies.

What else? Minimal study yesterday but I got a fair-few things ticked off my to-do list, some of which were imperative like paying my tuition fees! Now that was an effort! The bank lady made me repeat at least 8 times the amount I'm sending and each time it really hurt.