A little recap...

Well, only a three month hiatus between posts. I’ll try to stick to something a bit more regular in the future.

I suppose a run down of my gassing/running/surfing activities wouldn’t go admiss.

Gassing. Actually going very well. I’ve been giving my own anaesthetics and everything seems to be going ok so far. This must of course mean there is a disaster hovering at my shoulder, looming, just waiting for my eye to come off the ball once before pouncing, ending my nascent career in a ball of flames and blood (my own).

Hopefully not, though.

I wanted to do more in the education vein with this blog, and that’ll be coming in the next few months. There’s not much ‘Web 2.0’ (is that even a phrase that people use any more?) resources on the web for anaesthesia, but I’ll be trying to track down what’s there and developing a system to keep track of it all. In the meantime there’s a few new-to-me resources:

· Anaesthesia UK (a picture feed (see below – intubated horse!) and news feed, both pretty quiet)

· Westmead Anaesthesia Blog (good, updates sparse (like I can talk)).

· British Journal of Anaesthesia (very worthy. Also quite dull)

· The World of Anaesthesia podcasts. Some nice American lads with good chat.

· Dr Podcast. Taking over the world of revision podcasts one speciality at a time. Luckily they started with anaesthesia and have loads of audio for FRCA revision. Note the ‘radical’ picture on the homepage: yes siree, I only listen to revision podcasts when I’m pulling some big air on my snowboard...

Ah yes, the FRCA. I’ve chickened out of the February sitting because I am a big fat chicken (insert favoured chicken noise here: I like a solid ‘B-BWAK!’).

So D-day is 7^th of June.

Hum. I will pass this exam (there, I said it on the internet, so it must be true).

Running. Just ticking over at the moment. I joined the SWRR, which sounds a bit like an Eastern European far-right political movement but is actually a very nice bunch of people.

By ‘eck there’s a lot of them though. It’s a big club. The Wednesday night run has six or seven groups that run for an hour at six minute miles (CRAZY) to ten minute miles. I’m firmly in the middle, plodding along at eight minute miles (they plod; I desperately try to keep up like an asthmatic guinea fowl).

Surfing. Awwww surfing...I hadn’t been for ages and then went to Saunton yesterday, awesome to be in the water despite not-ideal conditions. Probably something to do with the 5 buddies I went out with...props! Note to self: must start going more often...look up magic seaweed...decide on late afternoon surf.

(Nothing written about surfing today can omit mention of Kelly Slater, 10 times world surf tour champion and one of the best athletes on the planet. Check out the video of the final heat against Aussie Bede Durbidge, particularly Slater’s second wave - 10.00 perfect score...he's the bald one in red:)

Tis it for the moment,l you’ll be relieved to hear. It will get more educational next time, I really want to do a review of traumatic brain injury and get my Monro-Kellie hypothesis on (I know...what a loser...:)

PS after writing this I’ll be emailing the link to some friends and relatives who I know will be ‘fair’ with the criticism/slagging off. Incredible as it may seem, I’m the only one who’s read this blog so far...no, you’re right...not so incredible.

PPS Hurts (a trendy band for trendy people like me). They’re unfortunately a bit like a Savage Garden/Gary Numan love child, but this tune is tippety-top:

Clean Stick

It's taken me ages to sort out my board given (a) night shifts and (b) lack of sunshine to melt all that wax...but finally she is displayed in all her naked de-waxed glory:

You'll notice all the little dents along the surface of the board. These pressure dings are the sign of a well loved surfboard and are caused by anything really...my body parts or car, someone else's body parts or car, walls, shelves etc etc. Essentially it's proof I don't sit in watching TV all day!

You'll also notice the little lump of wax at the far end. Yes, it's pink. It was a rushed purchase.

Luckily it's gone on transparently so I don't have a pink board...but it smells of strawberries. Not real strawberries either. That synthetic vanilla-esque scent that is usually aimed at children.

On the plus side it's really sticky...took it out in Puttsborough last week and had a lovely little surf in very nice conditions (see photo).

Hopefully the smell will wear off...not sure if I can be bothered to de-wax and re-wax all over again!

Puttsborough 18/07/2010

Online Education

The point, really, behind this blog is for me to have a think about online education and how I use it.

Six months from the end of my Emergency Medicine career I discovered the excellent Life In The Fast Lane blog, a great resource for education in Emergency Medicine. One of their posts presented a table of other EM blogs and podcasts, and through this I discovered EM-Blog, Emergency Medicine Updates, Emergency Medicine Forum and The Central Line. And of course the not-quite-as-cool-as-it-thinks-it-is-but-still-quite-cool EM:RAP.

Every doctor has that experience: you come across a clinical question and think “I must look that up later”. Really good doctors actually do it; for the rest of us, sometimes the inevitable happens and life intervenes. The resources above are awesome precisely because they take all those little questions buzzing around in your brain - when does a pregnancy test turn positive (and negative)? where are we on oxygen in MI? what’s the evidence for parasurgel? - and answer them in a very accessible and friendly way.

At the same time thanks to my friend Tom I’ve been introduced to Really Simple Syndication (RSS) (I know, a bit behind the curve).

A RSS reader like Google Reader will drag all the updates from your favourite websites & blog to one place where you can absorb all the information. When you install an application like Reeder on your generic 3G phone that can drag all this stuff together from you on the move – well, now you’re really cooking.

All this won’t be news to most web-savvy people. But this is postgraduate medical education as I like it. Bite size, useful and to the point. It’s a brave new world to a lot of doctors though, used to text books and libraries (which certainly have their place). A continuous drip-feed of education, though, is easy to digest, and can become almost addictive to evidence and research-hungry docs.

So, to the point. This blog will hopefully draw together online educational resources in anaesthetics, inspired mainly by Life In The Fast Lane. This will hopefully turn into an education resource

Naturally it’ll follow what I’m doing – first (fumbling) steps in anaesthetics, followed by working for the primary, and then the final, plus the work on medical education I hope to do in the next few years.

And of course, some running. And surfing.

And cheese.

My cheese! All mine!

No. 003

3. Surf

I really like being in the sea with a surfboard. Unfortunately I lack the grace, agility and balance to look cool while I do it. So the main aims for 2010/2011 will be:

(a) Have a stronger paddle (and therefore catch more waves)

(b) Surf on green water all the time

(c) Look cool doing it like my friend Tony.

I think (c) will be a struggle, but a bit of lane swimming should sort out my paddle. Memo to self: find a local swimming pool.

The stick is a 8' Local Hero board which I brought second hand. Not the most amazing choice for a first time buyer - the pin (pointy) tail can make it difficult - a board with a flatter tail would catch a bit more. That said it's a bit more manoeuvrable on the wave once you're going. But the main reason I brought was it was the first ever board I stood up on and therefore occupies a special place in my heart :)

Anyway, take a look:

Y'see how it turns black at the back half of the deck? This is the years of accumulated wax from the previous owner and me. Needs to come off and get re waxed - looks dirty! Have managed to take half off and you can now see the local hero logo clearly:

Anyway, enough surf fetish. Back with some medical education musings in the next couple of days.

No. 002

2. Run

Not running away from the Primary...although it’s tempting.

Competitor 312 in the Bideford 10k. Pain/suffering model's own.

Despite the expression on my face above, I like to run. And like all runners I'm obsessed by personal bests:

10k PB = 46:40 (Bideford 2009).

½ marathon PB = 1.39:15 (Cardiff 2009).

2010 has been a bit of a duff year for my running – due exams and a liking of cheese (I love cheese, but it does slow me down. Especially brie). One race so far this year...a very average 49 minute 10k in Bristol with an upset tummy (a poorly-timed Muller crunch corner one hour before the race).

The excellent North Devon Road Runners licked me into shape in 2009, but I'm between running clubs at the moment, which is part of the problem.

But it’s probably the cheese.

So running timetable for 2010 is:

(a) Join Southwest Road Runners (they do off road too) on moving to Exeter next week

(b) Compete (ha!) in Bristol half 5^th September

(c) Find another race to do. Preferably off road.

(d) Cut down on cheese.

Check back for run updates! I might keep a cheese diary.

No. 001

Not a great name, I'll grant you. The backslashes will make a url and filing posts difficult. And I'm not really sure if the bauhaus font I'm thinking of is quite as trendy as I think it is. They're the three things I want to be good at though. Gas first:

1. Gas.

Passing gas, really. I've spent three years training to be an Emergency Physician (A&E doctor) but the bits of it I really loved were the rotations in anaesthetics and intensive care. Most Emergency Department docs find these the most boring months of their training - they want to be back in the ED, where the action is. I liked the quieter, more structured atmosphere of theatre and ICU, though. After a lot of thinking and talking to experienced and clever people I applied for an anaesthetics training job.

Now that my EM exams and rotations are behind me, I start in Royal Devon and Exeter hospital in the South West of England next month. The first major hurdle is the ‘Primary’ – a word guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of any anaesthetic trainee. A multiple choice question paper and then a clinical exam with a viva a few months later. It hurts really bad, apparently.

So I need to:

- Decide when I’m going to sit it

- Work out how I’m going to revise

Endless excitement awaits me ;)

Well, that's all pretty dry, isn't it? I hope run and surf are going to be more interesting!