Mala Mawkin

Former blog contributor

Course: MBBS Medicine

Learn more about Mala

Harvard Med Placement

MBBS Medicine

Instagram: @malamawkin

In my final year as an Imperial Med Student I have been super fortunate to have the opportunity to join the Harvard/Boston Children’s Hospital Innovation and Digital Accelerator Team here in Boston. I was linked up to this placement by researchers at Imperial, and so far it has been fantastic!

I am working as a Digital Health intern looking at how we can use #bigdata to enhance healthcare delivery, especially when related to infectious diseases and health inequalities. I have also been looking at the differences in implementation of digital health strategies here in comparison to the UK.

Malawi Medical Elective (2)

MBBS Medicine

It has been a fantastic few days here in Malawi. We travelled up to Nkhata Bay hospital and saw first hand how a hospital functions with only one employed doctor. We visited Lake Malawi and also enjoyed being welcomed into the local church for a lively Sunday Morning service! We have also tried the traditional Malawi food kindly cooked by our hospital guide and served at his family home.

In ward rounds, we observed what it was like to not have curtains and privacy between patients. We saw how patients had to bring their own linen in as there was none in the hospital.

Malawi Medical Elective

MBBS Medicine

Finals are done! Now we get the exciting task of going on our medical electives to finish off med school. Imperial have kindly funded partial bits of it and first stop: Malawi.

I am travelling with my good friend in my year, Emma Larsson. We are joining an e-health research project here in Malawi. To put it into perspective on the Human Development Index, Malawi is placed 171 out of 189 countries.

We travelled around the local hospitals today, meeting the teams we will be working with. I have done 2000+ days of med school but today was the most important day of them all.

Practicing our Clinical Skills

MBBS Medicine

We are now a week away from finals, and revision is at it’s peak. But before we headed off into this revision hole the faculty made sure that we were all feeling confident about our practical skills. This is really key, as so much emphasis is put on by students about written exams when really we need to also be preparing to practically be a doctor!

We have great clinical skills teams across each of our different hospital sites here at Imperial. I was based at West Middlesex Hospital for my final placement and we had a session to ensure we were safe to administer IV drugs and take blood culture samples properly.

Final Year Medical Student Reflection

MBBS Medicine

Twitter: @malamawkin | Instagram: @malamawkin

It has been a busy end to the term and it really is getting close to the end now- I only have 4 weeks of clinical time left on the wards after Christmas before finals. There is so much going on right now. I have been busy at interviews for my foundation programme, getting my final competencies done on wards and we recently did the Situational Judgement Exam (which counts 50% to allocations for junior doctor training)! However, this term I have also been feeling how close we are to becoming actual doctors (hopefully). This was made even more clear a few weeks ago when I did CPR for the first time.

Simulation Training at Medical School

MBBS Medicine

Final year is going at full speed- with only (gulp!) 7 months to go until our finals exams are done. We have received our GMC numbers now and from Monday will have our account details to apply for our first job in the NHS.   So as the real life stuff is ramping up, so is the training to help us be junior doctors. I am currently on my emergency medicine attachment and as part of this we had a simulation day based at West Middlesex Hospital. It was fantastic!    The aim of the day was to give us experience handling emergency situations in a “safe” environment.

#NHS70 – Reflections of a medical student

MBBS Medicine

Twitter: @malamawkin | Instagram: @malamawkin

This week marks the 70th anniversary of the NHS and the celebrations are really inspiring. A couple of years ago when the junior doctor contract strikes occurred in my 3rd year the outlook felt quite bleak for a career in the NHS. Many of my friends considered switching career paths and I think we all felt quite unsure of how our working life would be shaped by the changes. However, 2 years on and now about to start final year…there really is a different mood in the air.

We know that the life of a junior doctor is going to be hard, and we know that it will be a shock from medical school life.

Doing an exam on our Ipad- Pathology 2018

MBBS Medicine

Twitter: @malamawks | Instagram: @malamawkin

As you know, Imperial gives all of us medical students an iPad which we use to get a whole range of resources. This includes eBooks for modules, we complete our sign offs for hospital placements on it and even have revision tools on it. However, this was the first time I have completed an actual end-of-year summative exam on the iPad and it was really interesting.

So the exam was the Pathology exam (5th year exam) on Monday which covered Microbiology, Immunology, Haematology, Histopathology, Chemical Pathology and Ethics & Law. It was 175 questions with 50 of them being very short answer questions (vsa).

Revising for 5th Year Clinical Medical Exams

MBBS Medicine

Twitter: @malamawks | Instagram: @malamawkin

It really is that time of year again…the stress levels are rising and 5th year exams are approaching. We have about 6 weeks left until our first exam and although that sounds a while away still, there is a lot to cover. On top of this, we are still attending our hospital attachments daily.

I wanted to share with you a few resources that I am using to help me through this revision period this year, hopefully it can help anyone else revising for clinical exams and not sure where to start!

  • Brainscape: Imperial Medicine students past and present have made flashcards on this amazing app that is a great revision tool.

Learning how to teach at medical school

MBBS Medicine

Twitter: @malamawks | Instagram: @malamawkin

In 5th year we are all given a compulsory one week of teaching skills. It is hard to imagine why we need to learn how to teach- surely everyone knows the basics?! But actually, what I found over the week was how little I actually knew about teaching and how vital it is for being a good doctor- whether you are training medical students, teaching colleagues about cases or even presenting at a conference.

We learnt the basis on teaching skills and theory behind practical methods on the Monday, which lead us to be split into teams to design and teach each other how to make a paper airplane (very competitive!).

Learn more about life at Imperial

London skyline silhouette London skyline silhouette