The day started out with an early morning drive to Bury St Edmunds, we went to the education centre and listened to a welcome speech by Diane the education director at West Suffolk Hospital. After that we had the key note speaker, Dr Siklos, who talked to us about many things including the NHS constitution and some of the NHS values, it was a real insight into how the NHS views medical students and how important the morals of the people who work in the NHS to the treatment of patients.
We then split of into groups and went to do different activities, the first one I did was go into the clinical skills lab where we learnt to take manual blood pressures, the different kind of weight bearing statuses, and how to resuscitate an unconscious patient. These were interactive and for me the highlight of the day. We also had a talk from Mark Manning where he describes a case study of an elderly man and how rewarding working to save his life is and all of the different jobs that were involved in saving his life. We then had a talk on interview technique and the importance of first impressions.
We then had lunch, after that we had a talk from a Head nurse, Rowan Proctor, she told us about a story where she had to stabilise a patient outside of hospital which was outside of her comfort zone. She spoke about the rewards of that and how rewarding a career in the NHS can be. After that we then had the career market place where we could talk to different people and network with them. I was able to talk to both a foundation doctor and a medical student.
Overall the day was incredibly enjoyable and informative.