Ibrahim Shaikh - Work Experience Journal by Ibrahim Shaikh

Where I am going for Work Experience

ishaikh12 — 2024-05-16 03:50:11 UTC

I am going to Sheikh Khalifa Medical City which is a hospital. I plan to rotate between different departments although I believe that the majority of the week will be spent in Adult A&E.

How I got a placement

ishaikh12 — 2024-05-16 03:53:02 UTC

My father is a doctor at SKMC and someone he knows in another department had 10 placements. Luckily, doctors' children get priority so I managed to get a placement.

My First Day

ishaikh12 — 2024-06-12 13:04:09 UTC

At 8:00 I arrived at SKMC. I went to the Education office where I met Kellie Kiernan who helped me to arrange my work experience. We then had a meeting with all of the other children on work experience at SKMC which I believe was 17 in total. Kellie told us about clinical etiquette and other basic rules and notices. Then I went to the A&E department which is called ER in the UAE. The day started off quite slowly. My supervisor was Dr Nasser Ahmed who was a very nice guy. However, he told me that in the mornings, there are very little interesting cases, and that it gets a lot busier in the evening. Unfortunately, my shift ends at 2:00, so I don't think I will be able to see the busier part of ER. First, we visited one of the wards that actually had a doctor from another wing who was sick with COVID or Flu-like symptoms. We requested a PoCT test for COVID and 20 minutes later it came up on the system as negative. As his symptoms weren't too bad, the doctor prescribed him some paracetamol and discharged him. The day went by very slowly, and doctor Nasser told me that the morning always is not busy at all and has very few critical cases. SKMC uses a very comprehensive system that shows the doctors all of the information they need to know about all of their patients. It also gives them lots of prompts about symptoms to help them write in depth reports while saving time. One thing that surprised me was the amount of time we spent in the office simply writing reports, but I think it gets busier as the day goes on. At around 11am, doctor Nasser dropped me off at Critical with Caitlin from Chimera to see if there were any interesting cases. However, Caitlin had seen even less cases and we spent the next hour just in the office. At 12am, my dad texted me and asked me if I wanted to come up and observe one of his procedures in Radiology as he is an Interventional Radiologist. His cases were a lot more interesting, and on that day I witnessed a GJ tube (Gastrojejunal tube - goes into the stomach or intestine to feed the patient) change and the insertion of a dialysis line which extracts blood and filters it in a machine if the kidneys cannot clean the blood properly. These were a lot cooler than the cases I had seen in Er. However, they both took place in the theatre with the use of X-Rays to see the line. This meant I had to stay outside and all of the doctors inside had to wear lead vests. However, there were windows and a screen to see the X-Ray image so I could see some of the things they were doing. My shift ends at 2 but the hospital is quite relaxed and since I hadn't taken a lunch break, me and my dad left at 1:20pm.

The other cases I saw that day were:

Dislocated shoulder (follow-up)
Prolapsed lumbar disc - this was interesting as his lower vertebrae were pressing against his lumbar nerves and causing pain, numbness and reduced range of movement in his legs
Asthma
Hypertension, cardiac arrhythmia and central chest pain (which is basically a minor heart attack)

My Father's Procedure

ishaikh12 — 2024-06-12 13:05:52 UTC

Here you can see the blind that I had to look through to see the theatre where my father was operating. However, it isn't that good as I had to get a shot with none of the doctors' faces in it, which happened rarely.

My Second Day

ishaikh12 — 2024-06-12 13:21:06 UTC

On the second day, Dr Nasser was off so I stayed with Dr Hassan who was super friendly, particularly because my dad is good friends with him and we have also met before (outside of the hospital). The day was quite similar to the first day in that it was incredibly quiet and the cases were not that interesting. I must say I was quite disappointed by the amount of time we spent documenting; for every patient visit (which was maximum 5 minutes), Dr Hassan spent at least 30-45 minutes just typing out reports, looking at scans, and prescribing drugs. But don't think I was fully disappointed by ER, because there were lots of benefits:

I learnt new skills such as reading an ECG reading
I was able to see a wide range of cases which was very beneficial for my general medical terminology and knowledge.

Another thing I liked was the fact that I could compare to A and E in the UK as I have been multiple times for my younger brother. I think that the lack of a GP over here means that things that you never think had to be treated in a hospital in the UK have to be treated in ER in the UAE. And this meant that most of the cases I saw I would never in a million years consider to be an emergency. Anyway, at 12 o'clock, my dad said I could come over again to IR, and Caitlin also came with me because she also wanted to see some more interesting cases. Today, my father was doing cases using ultrasound and not X-Rays, which meant we could be in the room less than a metre away from the patient. The first procedure we witnessed was a biopsy, where my father supervised a junior doctor. First they made a small incision with scissors, and then used a special needle type instrument that stabbed quickly into the kidney and then retracted back, holding a very thin and long tube of the patient's kidney. The reason they did this was because it was a transplant kidney so they wanted to see whether the patient's immune system was responding. The lab tech also gave me an opportunity to see the the sample under the microscope which was quite cool. I also added the picture of the scan that my father used to identify where to take the sample from.

My Third Day

ishaikh12 — 2024-06-14 11:43:38 UTC

On Wednesday I didn't really see anything too interesting. I was with Dr Lemiass who was very nice. The majority of the day was quite slow again, however. I did see lots of cases, but none of them were quite interesting:

Myalgia (muscular pain) in left shoulder
Constipation and kidney failure
Respiratory failure and lactic acidosis
UTI
Anemia (less amount of RBCs) due to blood loss
Migraine, sinus congestion, asthma, potential flu/COVID - this 53 year old female was not in that bad of a state but was overall unwell in many ways. Her infection was also worsened by her asthma.

I also went to the canteen and was interviewed by Mr Schooley and bought a chicken wrap which was quite nice.

My Fourth Day

ishaikh12 — 2024-06-14 12:03:52 UTC

On the fourth day I saw some very interesting cases. The first was someone who had swallowed some bleach. While her symptoms were not too bad, Dr Amin (who I was being supervised by) had to figure out whether it was suicidal or accidental. In the end, it was clear that she had swallowed it accidentally despite the claims that it was intentional. This was also interesting because I also asked Dr Amin about the role AI would play in a clinical environment earlier that morning. After this case, he was explaining to me different roles that AI could potentially fill and others that it would never be able to do. He gave this example to show that AI could not replace him as the nuances and fine attitudes and behaviours of the patient all needed to be taken into consideration to see whether they were lying or not. He told me that without the cues from their body language and facial expressions, an AI would never be able to determine whether the intent was suicidal or not.

On Tuesday, I saw a renal biopsy with my dad, and today I saw Dr Amin refer another patient to my dad for another renal biopsy.

I also saw a 17 year old girl with an allergic reaction that I also saw on Tuesday for another allergic reaction. When I saw her list of allergic reactions I couldn't believe it because of the sheer amount of allergies she had. Both on Tuesday and today she had an exam in about 2 hours which also put her on the priority list and when considering medicines to give her, Dr Amin also had to factor in the time it would take to administer the drug.

My father also arranged for me to spend time with Dr Ottorino in the vascular clinics. There, I saw someone with varicose veins, someone with thrombosis of the superior vena cava and the removal of stitches of someone who formed an ulcer during the insertion of a dialysis line. I also saw someone with a lot of issues with their foot: loss of circulation to their leg and a bone infection which also had lots of other secondary effects.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0?ui=2&ik=1ec6c6e274&attid=0.1&permmsgid=msg-f:1801838113447124052&th=19016a37b6c69c54&view=att&disp=safe

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0?ui=2&ik=1ec6c6e274&attid=0.3&permmsgid=msg-f:1801838113447124052&th=19016a37b6c69c54&view=att&disp=safe

My Fifth Day

ishaikh12 — 2024-06-24 03:09:10 UTC

Friday was a very quiet day having only seen 3 patients:

A person who ended up in A and E accidentally although they needed a renal biopsy
A person who had a fever
A person with cardiac arrythmia

For the second patient, Dr Lemiass let me use the stethoscope to listen to the patient's heart beat and breathing. I noticed that his breathing was very shallow. Dr Lemiass also noticed that there was a slight wheeze, but I was unable to find that. However, I didn't realise that I had to put it in very specific spots in order to be able to hear clearly.

I was planning to OR at 11:10 with Dr Ottorino who I was with the in the vascular clinics, however, we finish at 12:00 and my dad said they probably wouldn't start till 11:30. I also had to collect my certificate, so unfortunately I didn't get to go to OR.

Summary

ishaikh12 — 2024-06-26 04:20:58 UTC

Overall, I am really glad that I took this work experience, and it has shown me a lot about the field of medicine. A huge advantage of working where my dad works is that he got to show me much more in other fields rather than just A and E. Unfortunately, I do know now that I probably don't want to become an A and E doctor as I wasn't particularly impressed. However, I do know that A and E in the UK is much more interesting as my uncle works in A and E in the UK. I'm glad because I got to compare my experience in the NHS to my experience in SKMC. I have furthered my knowledge in the field of medicine a lot during this week and I have learnt valuable medical terminology.