hla and lockdown reflections

My Projects

I got the HLA Scholarship! Wait what is this? Since then, my project on ‘better understanding how prepared future doctors are to work with AI’ picked up one of the Best Poster Prizes at the November Conference. I actually thought I missed the deadline to submit but it was a delightful surprise and a great boost of energy to continue to build my project. Lots of exciting themes to come soon - Surveys, Journal Clubs, Virtual Electives and hopefully an article that might be published one day.

Why you should join the HLA?

I’m not paid or urged to say this - its just really good.

So many incredible people exist within this organisation - high output academics, publically vocal juniors and healthcare professionals across seemingly every specialty and subspecialty. It is a really rich source of human talent. The educational sessions are unbelievably inspiring. They will give feedback on exactly how they see it, there’s no veil of politeness -> this is what you could have done. The opportunities within this organisation are plentiful. As one scholar once said, once you’re part of the HLA, you never really leave. It certainly does seem true.

so what have i learnt so far…

• Just purely reflecting on yourself. Not necessarily understanding why you’re doing things, but just thinking about opportunities - why actually is this happening for me rather than to me.
• As a Medical student - you have a freedom of expression - youthful energy and drive - you’re picking up small projects - organic self-interest ‘sense of doing things because you want to do’ rather than for career or politicial gain. Tied down to a particular career interest or post that hoping to fulfill.
• Think about things on the reverse? For example - how do people perceive you? Playing that to your advantage.
• When its all said and done - how will people summarise you in one word? Kinda nice way of saying - what are you aiming for. Your north star.
• Mentoring relationships are hard over the net. But you can make an impression.
• Organic ideas that germinate as a result of what people say. Just chat init.

bits im taking forward

public accountability

Living in lockdown and doing a lot of our project work behind screens has re-emphasised the importance of social time. Just speak-up - publically - there is accountability in having your project in the open. Knowing people are enjoying the content whether through the public or your mentor is an incredible drive in itself.

your well-being

Socially above all else - friends and your team - well-being - focus on sustainable better life behaviours to afford yourself high quality work time - running, exercise, gym, sports - more critical in a lockdown environment - but guess what - what if elements of a lockdown environment like distanced learning, smaller connected and isolated networks become more of a feature of modern life! all a bit existential. enough for now.

questions for the sake of questions?

this is all very raw so bear with me - i’ll probably revise all this one day…

One of the other things the HLA has helped me appreciate is people’s perspectives. People just come up with good stuff. Sorta like how people think on the reverse or blind-side?

Reverse: Say you’re trying to implement a campaign advocating for structured breaks in junior doctor shifts? We all agree it should occur but why does it not occur? Okay, there are issues beyond our control and even if mandated, why would we not take breaks? So the bigger question is how do we encourage breaks? This series of repeated questions of why turns eventually into a how - how can we improve.

Blind: Say you’ve got a junior doctor ward who are always busy and seemingly stressed. How can you improve their lives? Is it because they’re short-staffed? Is it because there are too few nurses? Is it because they are unprepared? If it is because they’re short-staffed? Why is this occuring? How can we improve this? What could be our plan? In this case, the solution is not obvious but be can help our cause by asking lots of follow-up questions and deducing a key question. I guess what I’m trying to say here - is the key question isn’t really obvious from the first question - but the key question has become how can we p

first principles

I think one thing I’ve learnt this term, particularly when at revision sessions for Finals, is taking things back to first principles:

1. identifying assumptions
2. breaking down the problem
3. creating new solutions.
   
   e.g. do Medical Students need to know about Coding skills? - Wait why would they even need to know? Personal projects, research projects, they will not be troubleshooting big organisational software programmes. So the question is. How can we encourage positive uptake of coding skills as means of encouraging students to further their interest in particular careers e.g. oncology?

next

jeremy kyle osces