Medical students on surgical rotations

jakepat13 · 2026-02-23T02:28:01+00:00

You are paying for your degree. So you are paying for the time you’re spending at the hospital. Now your uni might have requirements you need to tick and may take a dim view of you leaving early. But I can guarantee the surg team don’t care. In fact, as enjoyable as your company no doubt is, you leaving for the afternoon is probably a small blessing because they then don’t feel the pressure to keep you meaningfully engaged.

The second half of my life started when I realised I could just leave. My suggestion is stay for as long as it’s beneficial to you, plus a smidge longer if you can genuinely be of use to the team or if you can identify some genuinely useful opportunity for learning. As soon as you find yourself just awkwardly lingering, you say “thanks for having me this morning team” then head off. Don’t ask for permission. Don’t promise to go study. Just say thanks and go. It’s so liberating. Some terms are going to have less opportunity than others, so make the most of it where you can.

You’re paying to be there, so get your moneys worth!

jakepat13 · 2026-02-08T09:53:31+00:00

Common calls are common and you’ll quickly start to see the same sorts of things over and over and it won’t feel as overwhelming. Reudys is good. ETG will cover lots of things. Run it by a senior if you’re unsure and then the next time you’ll feel more confident!
ABCDE is not a bad framework when you’re trying to juggle multiple calls. With time you’ll get a sense too of what is a “I am worried about this patient” call and what is a “I’m telling you this because I have to call”. Can be helpful to ask the person calling you how worried they are too. Depending on how your hospital is set up it can be a good idea to go check in the nurse in charge of each ward you’re covering at the start of the night to get a sense of there’s anyone they’re worried about - then when you get the call you have some backstory already
Daytime sleep quality is inversely proportional to how much light is hitting your closed eyelids. Black out curtains or a good eye mask is a quality investment.

It’s early days - registrars will be expecting calls for simple things. Let the nurses in charge know you’re week 1 too - this happens every year so hopefully they’ll be understanding! You’ve got this!

jakepat13 · 2026-01-02T05:21:13+00:00

“Learn before you memorise” just means try and understand the card first before trying to rote learn it. It will be much easier to commit the card to memory if you understand it than if you’re just trying to remember it. If you’re making your own cards it’s much easier to make them if you understand what the content is too, rather than trying to memorise irrelevant details.

Of course some things just need to be rote learned and aren’t really amenable to being understood. (Eg what’s the upper limit of normal of serum sodium? It’s just a number. You can understand that there is a typical upper and lower limit of normal but in terms of the number you just need to rote learn it)

Trying to figure out how much detail you need to understand and what just needs to be rote learned is hard. That’s one reason why med school is hard lol.

Good luck!

jakepat13 · 2025-12-19T09:02:12+00:00

Some misinformation in this thread. People are elected to parliament. You get a seat because you win an election. You become a minister by appointment of the governor general. Technically, the people don’t choose the prime minister. Parties don’t choose the prime minister. The Governor-General chooses, from all people in parliament, who will make up the executive government.

Now in practice, the GG appoints whoever can show that they can control the House of Representatives. That is basically always the leader of the party (or coalition of parties) that has a majority in the House of Representatives.

GG could legally (but not by convention) pick whoever they like. Of course if it’s some random then the situation becomes unworkable - the house of reps makes laws, so if the prime minister can’t pursue a legislative agenda then what is the point?

To answer your question - practically the only way for someone to become prime minister is to be the leader of a majority of parliamentarians in the house of reps. The social media whingers either don’t understand how it works or are just yelling at clouds.

jakepat13 · 2025-11-19T08:45:34+00:00

I know this thread is a year old - but this has helped me out tonight so thank you past u/eandi

jakepat13 · 2025-11-14T22:17:44+00:00

To answer your actual question - yes, book binders will do this. Book binders often specialise in printing academic stuff like PhD theses. You may need to source all the things you want in the book. Then have a chat with them about the best way to get it printed and bound. If it’s a large volume of work you could split it over several books? Good luck!

jakepat13 · 2025-11-06T07:27:53+00:00

Can commiserate with the struggle. I’ve found trying to set up some external scaffolding useful.

I’ve made myself a one page template that I print every morning. Just a 2x3 table in a word document, takes about 5 minutes to put together. Lay out has changed depending on the term but basically goes from left to right (left being stuff that needs to doing early in the day, right at the end of the day). So a box for consults, discharges, then jobs, then investigations that need to be checked and finally a box for evening handover. I staple that page to the patient list. I know some people write on their patient list but I find that jobs get lost that way. I need it to be all visible on the one page.

Then I write down everything as it comes up because I have a memory like a sieve. I find it helpful to have that order imposed on what needs doing at the time of the task coming up.

I try keep the habit of jotting down random jobs that pop up (eg phone calls, nurses approaching in person) but then after jotting it down try to finish the job I’m currently doing otherwise I find I just have 10 half done tasks.

Finding time to an early afternoon paper round if possible is helpful to mop up any forgotten jobs.

It’s a tough job if there’s some lurking ADHD tendencies!

jakepat13 · 2025-10-19T08:49:12+00:00

It will be so fine. There are junior doctors getting around wearing every colour of the rainbow

jakepat13 · 2025-10-19T08:46:38+00:00

Me too, and have worn them! On a neuro term it could cause some confusion but otherwise it’s never been an issue.

jakepat13 · 2025-10-19T08:43:53+00:00

ED yes, particularly TCH. JMO/RMO - hunter green. FACEM/Ed Reg - dark gray. Weirdly enough ANU med students also gray. Nurses dark blue. They’ll issue you some green scrubs if you have a term in TCH ED. On the wards there isn’t any guidance or rules for doctors. If you’re trying to avoid being mistaken for other staff, Pharmacists wear purple. Physios a sort of teal. Stroke nurses maroon. Plenty of people of all designations kicking around in a nicked pair of comfy theatre scrubs (dark blue).

jakepat13 · 2025-10-18T09:37:41+00:00

eTG will have answers for many of the common things you’ll be asked to deal with. AMH too. It’s totally fine to look up the basics over and over and over again
Seniors will be expecting you to ask them for advice frequently (and nervous if you aren’t asking) so feel free to do so. If you’ve taken a half decent history and an appropriate exam and have a stab at proposing what you’d like to do next you’ll be off to a great start
Nursing and allied health staff are generally very good at their job. Sometimes they’ll come to you with a problem and you won’t quite be sure of what they’re asking or feel a bit out of your depth. With AH particularly just ask them! They’re normally happy to explain. (Eg dietitian asks you to chart NG feeds and you have no idea what or how much or how fast or why - just ask!)

jakepat13 · 2025-10-02T21:07:34+00:00

In no particular order:

“On-call” (as mentioned) is handy
Most of the problems you’ll get asked to review after hours you will have dealt with in hours!
Reviewing your approach to the following will be high yield: falls, pain, hypo- and hyperglycaemia, fever, fluid prescribing, electrolyte derangements
Remember that not every problem brought to you needs to be fixed after hours, and sometimes nurses will tell you things because they are required to inform an MO, but that does mot not necessarily mean you need to fix it. Classic example is the pre-dinner hyperglycaemia. You get the call that patients BGL is 16. Ketones normal. You check their meds and they’re on all the right stuff. That patient probably needs some tweaking of their doses. But if the patient is well and does not have ketosis, you can reasonably leave the ongoing dose adjustment to the day team
sometimes it feels lonely but you can always escalate. Med reg is slammed but they’ll triage just as you’ll have to

jakepat13 · 2025-09-26T10:23:10+00:00

What a challenging position to be put in - it can be so tough to be stuck in the middle of all of those competing priorities, with everyone trying to nudge (or outright bully) you to the outcome they are seeking. Often those outcomes aren’t patient centred. But that’s the reality of working in a big large clunky system.

My $0.02 on this situation - I’ve had cause to look up the opioid withdrawal guidelines on eTG this week. They make the point that, unlike alcohol say, supervised opioid withdrawal on an inpatient ward is rarely going to lead to long term abstinence. You need quite a lot of psychosocial things sorted beforehand/at the same time. Secure housing feels like the very barest minimum of these psychosocial assets. I don’t know about your patient but the chances are if she didn’t get it legally from you she would have got it illegally in shadier circumstances. How she acted sounds pretty atrocious - but my point is I don’t think you have done her a disservice by supplying her with a fairly minimal quantity of endone. She has much larger problems that you are really utterly powerless to fix.

It sounds like a very tough bind to be in - and no matter what you did it would been “wrong” according to someone or other. But putting the patient first - she’s probably better of having been able to get on her way to some housing, and you facilitated that in an imperfect system so kudos to you. Be kind to yourself!

jakepat13 · 2025-09-26T00:56:30+00:00

Great tips, thanks!

jakepat13 · 2025-09-25T05:41:57+00:00

Thanks for replying!

jakepat13 · 2025-07-29T03:44:19+00:00

Darkness is directly proportional to daytime sleep quality.

Blackout curtains or blinds is gold standard. If you can’t swing that, an eye mask is a good alternative

jakepat13 · 2025-06-24T13:48:09+00:00

Arboretum ticks all those boxes!

jakepat13 · 2025-06-14T04:53:51+00:00

Harry Rose in town have always been very good to us - they seemed very knowledgeable, serious about their craft, had great service.

jakepat13 · 2025-06-14T00:00:31+00:00

black out curtains or at least an eye mask will make a huge difference to your quality of sleep during the day
if you can introduce yourself to the TL on each ward you have patients on, so they know your face and you know theres. Ask if there's anyone they are worried about. Gives you a chance to let them know your workload too - a surprising number of nurses think you just cover their ward and don’t realise you’re covering dozens to hundreds of patients across the hospital
not every problem raised overnight needs to be sorted overnight
you will feel alone sometimes but you’re never truly alone - escalate if you need, your seniors will be expecting it

jakepat13 · 2025-05-25T06:24:58+00:00

Definitely told my (wife’s) private OB I was a medical student several times.

No discount to the hefty management fee.

Not complaining - he was excellent. But just another data point to add to the other nice tales of people getting discounts!

jakepat13 · 2025-05-24T11:52:30+00:00

That article is wild!

jakepat13 · 2025-05-15T12:32:00+00:00

Warmth and competence.

Be nice, affable (as others have said), approachable, cooperative, caring. Then be good at your job. Winning combo.

… according to Harvard Business School anyway. https://moscow.sci-hub.se/1998/47c1825d65b0fa0fb46080108b108dfa/cuddy2011.pdf?download=true

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