Fran's belated blog based news....

Following an amazing weekend in Manchester - who would have thought the first time I watched X factor would have been with the Medsin National Committee! Amazing cake and birthday fun-ness. Here's what's been going on....

In Medsin I have -

Been thinking about how to make the newsletter better. Including MedsINFORMATION, which has involved me looking around the internet for useful/interesting bits and pieces to do with global health. Hopefully it's going down well! Feedback to secretary@medsin.org!

Thinking about whether to apply to go to Thailand, went with my better judgement, not going to apply, now wondering if this was an error? It looks so much fun....

Thinking about long term medsin plans post meeting and generally trying to get a plan going!

Trying to get funding out of Bristol

In Medicine I have:

Been enjoying orthopeadics! Shock horror. This was surprising to me and those that live with me, further away from an orthopeadic surgeon I could not be. (Short, female, REALLY bad at anatomy, likes people etc)

Been mocked/laughed at by orthopeadics suregeons. Laughing at and mocking orthopeadic surgeons myself. Me: ''I suppose the 3 second rule doesnt apply in theatre'' After ortho surgeon drops something **withering look from surgeon''

Been feeling swiney post swine flu jab.

Out of Medsin/Medcine I have:

Been to see Bunny and the Bull. Recommended. Very silly.

Watching more West Wing in Gloucester illegally on the internet. Cursing megavideo.com when it doesnt have the episode i want. I particularly enjoyed the episode focussed on HIV patents.....!

(Been getting excited about xmas....is it too soon? Its after my birthday!?)

That's it folks.

Fran x

JC's Ruminations and Culminations of November

Hello folks :)

So I took a long look at my diary (I don't do that too often, it kinda scares you) and ruminated on what's been going on in the last month. In short, A LOT! Rather hilariously it seems things really picked up pace 1 month ago when a 'Dinner with Musty' was scheduled in and the ideas & intense pace for change really began...gotta love Medsin dinners :)

Medsin-wise
Since most of my year and Monday to Friday obviously seems to get spent on this, there's a good place to start.

• Great meeting with Elly on her fundraising plans, despite us having to cancel a fundraising meeting in London after she travelled through - what a trooper ;)
• BMA International Committee meeting - report at docs.medsin.org if you need it - covering international health & medicine issues - much came up, including how we can work together with them on issues including water/sanitation and refused asylum seekers' access to healthcare
• Nottingham Medsin National conference - PHWOAR! Such a busy weekend of awesome people, places, things and speakers. Really loved our first conference and have to thank them for hosting (again!) - not to Yonny for starting my speech video with a hilarious shouting JC. Check out some coverage at http://www.thelancetstudent.com/2009/11/03/medsin-nc09-vulnerability-in-health/!
  
• Spotlight on Health & Human Rights Conference @ Royal Society of Medicine - little bit of Medsin promo, met some Medsin folks who popped down to London for the weekend (some by surprise!) - the amazing Ben Warner from Dundee wrote up the event for The Lancet Student

Speakers and Joseph Fitchett (Royal Society of Medicine) at the Spotlight on Health and Human Rights conference - see http://www.thelancetstudent.com/2009/11/12/spotlight-on-health-and-human-rights/

• Did a little networking at the Public Policy Exchange 'Briding the Gap' conference where I had a chance opportunity to lobby the Department of Health on their policies. Ask me for details!
• Interactions with student unions - didn't enjoy that. You know what I mean, and I'm going to follow up on this with some other people who have had some *interesting* experiences with these people.
• SKIP Conference! What a party of folk, brilliant times and really good to see how things work in other groups or organisations. May have *borrowed* some ideas for our NC meeting from Danny Hutley (SKIP Coordinator)!
• Climate Change, Pharma, NC Meeting, Meeting Mike Rowson, Rhona MacDonald, Entitlement Working Group meeting. Jeez, should I do a weekly blog instead?! This is a long list of boringness and work!
  
• The highlight of course was our 2nd NC meeting (just gone, and after the deadline we set for blog postings, whoops) where I have to admit I was stunned by the brilliance of the whole team in terms of moving forward with a structured agenda and strategy. Particularly, Darth Vader, running with Master Yonny Grek (Communications) and chill-axing on Saturday evening was a well worth it after some v. intense few weeks!

Finally I think I'm ready for the role and the year ahead - it takes a while but after researching, training and learning from everyone on the team and from years gone by I think we're at a good place to kickstart some

In the Life of JC

Nearly have a place to live in London, that's good right? Also been good to set aside some time to catch up with all the many disparate people spread across London (and Leeds, nice little 2 day jaunt up North!); I plucked up the courage to watch a musical last week which actually turned out to be quite entertaining. Oh, can't miss out Sadhia and my lunch date in Kensington, finally got a load of those crepes! Yummy.

I've run out of energy to complete this, so am just going to post some random photos since they
make people happy.






The Star Wars Start to our Weekend. Love it.














No idea why, this photo makes me smile :)















I think...I think I'm angry in this one. But it is before lunchtime, so it might be hunger.


















Improving Sexpression-Medsin relations: Eva and Amena (Sexpression Coordinators) visit Medsin-UK HQ for a coffee by the canal :)

Sarah's November

Hello
October + November = all is busy in the land of GP, with not much else around in Torre or Paignton that's ok! Having a lot of fun with my own patient clinics most of the time and getting to see patients back again. Loving the GP friendlyness and being allowed to teach them as well as them teaching me. Medsin wise I have been getting through the AB fund applications and happily getting some money for projects and campaigns. Starting to plough on with the AB weekend coming up at the beginning of 2010! I have also had quite a lot of interest from people wanting to set up branches of Marrow and Sexpression. Locally I have run some training for Peninsula Sexpression and also facilitated my small group session on Global Health - with the help of Hans Rosling via gapminer of course! (for anyone not familiar with gapminder please see (www.gapminder .org).

Of course Im running as usual as the Sussex half marathon looms ever closer! Have also slotted in a bit of swimming and Dartmoor - very good for the mind and body. Though it is puring with rain just now - I am plucking up the courage to head for a run this evening....

With many stomps and smiles
Sarah xxx

October meets November

Where, where, where is this year going? Screeching towards job applications and grown up land (eek).

We've launched November's campaign, we are stopping the AIDS once and for all. I managed to trog along to the Stop AIDS speaker tour when it visited Leeds and left truly inspired - the speakers were amazing man. The patent pool work the AIDS troop are doing is shit hot and there were some very pleasing words about WTO and strengthening health systems love too - happy happy. Unhappily the Conservative candidate for Leeds was also there, I am bad at diplomacy as she just made me cross talking of "the next Conservative Government" with no possibility of defeat (incidentally my desired outcome is a hung parliament with a lib=lab coalition).

I've also been attending meetings with my medical school about how educational Thailand will be and I hosted el Presidente in Yorkshire.

In my alternative life as a HIV researcher (= lie ins followed by regret and stress filled typing) I have been veering away from actual biomedicine - I don't know how you cope with those labs Elster - and made my research all about asylum seekers. Woop.

In my second alternative life I had a Disney-come-zombie Halloween party and zombified my favourite Disney princess with the help of a truly vile ball dress (worn without irony to my year 11 prom!). Excellent work. I've also been taking advantage of FREE tickets Leeds city council provides to any under 26 year old to go to the Yorkshire Playhouse midweek - Grapes of Wrath last week, The Secret Garden next week. Lovely. I also went to see the film and then devoured the book of 'An Education' and advise you all to do the same in that order - Nick Hornby's screen play is EXCELLENT and deserves to be seen prior to reading the slightly bitter/cross/cruel writings of Ms Barber (it's a memoir).

That is all for now folks..... Exxxxxx

Proof of Elly's PIPETTING skills and AMAZING lab coat!!

In case anyone thought lab work is boring, or that I am not completely crazy!!!

 

Elly - the pharmacology-pipetting-yoga-maestro!

Blue Gold, and of course Training ad infinitum

I can't remember whether we decided if this was an internal communication tool, or an external one... naturally you'd expect me to tow the safer line in this case wouldn't you... Moving on swiftly.

I'm not so sure I like this WYSIWYG editor, it seems to be a bit meh.

Medsin-wise

I completely expected this, and I knew it was what I would be getting myself in for. But emailing is key. Email is king. Email is deity. Luckily I'm a technoamorant (I just made that word up, I think; it means technology lover in my mind), and going abroad for a week (which I shall come on to!) makes it hard to catch up, and you do end up missing deadlines for communication. Sorry guys!

I had the pleasure of attending the National Conference at Nottingham this month which I found immensely enjoyable. It was an incredibly well run conference, on an interesting and engaging subject and I left feeling invigorated and not brain-drained, as I usually do after conferences. Arranged for a couple of Training sessions to be run while I was there which seemed to go down a treat!

A lot of my time this month has gone into preparing Training New Trainers (TNT) in Iceland and in Manchester. This naturally, is the highlight of my time since I love Training and everything to do with it!

I had the pleasure of being invited to FINO (Federation of International Nordic medical students' Organisations) to hold TNT and then to attend their conference. More pleasure was had when I got there and met my amazing co-TNT Trainer, Karolina Tuomisto, and the amazing bunch of new Trainers that came.

I've decided that running TNT is the best thing ever. It's like crack, the enthusiasm and invigoration that you get from doing it is amazing. The rapidity that a group of people gets to know each other is amazing. You don't necessarily learn facts about each other, but you learn how each other work. It's a gruelling course for the new Trainers, but a journey that is frankly beautiful to watch and be a part of facilitating.

People-watching is fun.

My mission for this year is to run TNT at every possible opportunity. Capacity building for Medsin Trainers++++

I also have liased with the IFMSA Training Support Division Director as is part of my role. :)

The boring bit... my life outside of Medsin (at least there are pictures, right?)

Not really much going on here. Iceland was great fun. On the first day we got to go to the Houses of Parliament given a guided tour by Siv Friðleifsdóttir (pictured below), ex-Minister for Health and Social Security, ex-Minister for the Environment, ex-Minister for Nordic Co-operation, which was great fun.

Learning about Icelandic politics was fantastic, and learning about their economy especially. It was quite interesting talking to such a high level politician after Medsin Question Time a few weeks ago where a some of the local MPs were, how can I put this, might not have been so well read?

Below: TNT Team go to Icelandic Houses of Parliament

Alas, due to business, tiredness and a few other things I actually didn't experience any of the typical things people think of when they think of Iceland: Geysers, lagoons, and geothermal awesomeness. I did enjoy the view where we were though, but I have shamelessly stolen these pictures from one of the TNT attendees. I don't regret having too much work to visit this stuff, I was out there for business, and I only hope to go back one day when I can devote more time to pleasure.

The conference was entited Blue Gold (a reference to water), and the conference was opened by Iceland's President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson (pictured below)

He was an exceptionally good speaker, who seemed very, very into his Climate Change issues. He clearly understood the importance of the changes that the world is undergoing, and how we need to fix it now. A very inspirational and motivational speaker! He did namedrop Obama once or twice though... ;)

Post Scriptum

This WYSIWYG editor is driving me mad, randomly changing the line-height settings, inserting 's (actually it made me add a because it is crazy.) as it feels necessary, and then when it breaks something... You try to read the HTML, it's horrible. For shame Google, for shame. (I still love you).

New Website to be making an appearance?

Hello!

I'm feeling empowered :) The Medsin website is no longer such a logistical nightmare to me now, as I've had it all explained to me (i.e. how to work it/make it look differently etc.)

Which means everyone can be thinking of making a beautifully awesome new Medsin.org website. I love the way it works, it's just the design...which I'll need YOUR help with over the coming months to make it look the best that it can be.

I've made a little video to aid my efforts, which you'll all see soon...currently only Mr President has had the honour!

That's all I'm going to say. It's very exciting :)

xx

Duvet days, conferences and pipetting

A real mixed bag of a month.

 

National Medsin Wise:

 

My Medsin Highlight was getting to run a workshop at the National Coference on 'Selling Yourself' - fundraising and building your case for support. It was a real challenge, but I feel it went well, and in keeping with the entire National Conference in Nottingham, I had a wonderful time. The conference was brilliant, inspiring me to rethink what population would I as a doctor in the future like to treat.

 

Otherwise in Medsin I have been trying to manage the SWGs - Membership and Charity Status - but I haven't made any real progress in either department. This was particularly evident when I realised I had over four members of Membership ask explicitly for me to provide more guidance to the group. So really this is an entry to emphasise I need to work more on the SWG.

 

I have been updating a creating a FR resource pack, and have been gradually adding to the online pack.

 

General tasks: Chasing up sponsorship money, answering emails on how to FR, investigating possible national FR methods, and crawl my way out of the the emails that I hae let build up.

 

In Brighton: I have just started up a local branch of GHEP and am getting fanstatic support from BSMS. Have fantastic local Medsin committee and am really excited for the some of our upcoming events and plans. 

 

Non-Medsin:

 

I got to go to Powershift - which was amazing, and oddly very emotional.

 

I am pipetting away in the lab most days, and am happy to say I have had some good results and will soon be able to start write up my research project.

 

Sleeping, sleeping, sleeping - as I keep getting ill - and avoiding people and social activities as I recover - very boring.

 

Hoping the next month will be slightly brighter.