The Coloured Prescription

Is there anything scarier than optional reflection!In a surprisingly uplifting Halloween episode Lara reflects on nine things she learnt, wished someone had clued her in on before, during and after medical school. Some are obvious, some are counterintuitive and others are personal.Enjoy!

A meandering ramble with your fave perennial student around representation in medicine from a working and patient perspective.  Achieving equality, diversity and inclusion is something that many organisations claim to be working towards but the grim truth is in almost 30 years almost nothing has changed. Why? The answers aren't obvious but what is are the many efforts of people who are fighting the good fight. EDI is a dirty word in some circles but not in this episode, which does contain one naughty word. Check out Medium for a modified transcript along with further references.  

 Medicine is expensive. Student loans are not free money and the cost of being a medic is not cheap. Why?

I'm BACKKKKIn this episode; drugs, accents, gratitude journals and criminal singing. 

This episode has some adult themes, but also a game to play along with. Welcome to Nazi or Nah where we list a bunch of eponymous disease, scores, books and surgeries and ask if the names behind the disease were Nazis or Nah. It is a simple game but the answers are not always obvious. 

What is good character?Character, Identity and personality are similar but not the same. Medics, seemingly ahead and more than all the other professions revel in public self-abasement when we  make mistakes. Does anyone else read the MPTS reports for fun or is Lara just weird?Reflections have become weaponised and an exercise in tick boxing, is there a better way to show growth?All these questions and more are left half answered in this stellar pod episode. 

In this  questionable return to the medium the pod talks about middle classness and medicine. Together we've dallied with lower class issues and highlighted the upper class influence this episode is all about the middle. If we can figure out what middle class even means  Is Medicine still a middle class profession?Will it stay that way with the persistent increase in women and other Allied Health Professionals increasing their scope?Is the overwhelming middle class nature of medicine bad? How long does it take to adjust to the doctor identity?Bonus points to those who hear Potato the cat

In the second instalment of this class two part we take a look at the Big Boy reports of health inequalities: The Black report, the Marmot report and the Kings Fund Health Inequities.There is a big ol’ side note on social group and how this can influence, negatively and positively health outcomes. We look at how targeting specific groups can lead to better outcomes. 

Attempting to keep to a thursday episode this is a two parter about the impact of class in medicine.This episode touched on class, the medicine/nursing gender gap and how being a doctor rarely changes economic status

Could you survive on 6 powernaps a day? Or are you the type that needs 10 hours a night every night. Sleep is a core part of being alive, and we are not getting enough. This episode is a sip of nighttime warm milk with a brief look at sleep and what it is. Then snoring on through to the risks of not enough sleep before being rudely woken by the alarming way the NHS regards sleep.  Sleep: Are you getting enough? How do you sleep? Do you have any sleep hacks for managing night shifts. Let us know at:  Insta @ColouredPrescriptionPodTwitter @TheColouredRxResources Book: Why we sleep - Mathew WalkerPaper: https://ep.bmj.com/content/102/3/127.fullPaper: https://doi.org/10.5665/sleep.3298 

It is something we all consume and necessary out of life but do you think you know if your diet is nutritionally complete?Low fat or Low carb. High protein and one meal a day. There are so many varieties of diet out there. All while people are struggling to hit the basic requirements of fruit and vegetables a day. Have you hacked the perfect plate? Have you beaten "Big Carb" and escaped the tyranny of processed Junk food? Tell the pod your waysInsta @ColouredPrescriptionPodTwitter @TheColouredRx

Reflecting on some of the news of the week before diving down into a review and reflect of the ASIT conference last week.This short episode pulls no punches in a review of last week's #ASiT2021 conference. Currently in adversity, unsure about excelling, this episode flies in on time and before yet another exam. Life long learner here.ASiT's 2021 Conference was overall a big success and they should be proud of their event. However it was not perfect...Are virtual conferences worth it? Conference food at home? Are fuzzy slippers appropriate conference wear? Asking all the important questions here. Why are so many conference posters badly designed? Who signs these off? What can be done to increase the number of women getting big chunky leadership roles so more than one, admittedly legendary face, is appearing on our screens?How do you network without being a creep in a virtual space?How can we get even more pets in zooms?

It is World Book day and like many others Lara was a voracious reader. In this episode we look at some of the books that changed her view from teeny tiny bookworm toddler to adult book devouring caterpillar.Did any one else absolutely love Guns Germs and Steel? Who  was scared by the stories in The Coming Plague and who was intrigued? Please say someone else felt embarrassed reading Power Sex and Suicide?  Almost everyone in medicine now has read Atul Gawande, but how many have thought about how they communicate their own ideas? As a future medic Breath becoming Air hit me like a tonne of bricks but Baliga helped me find another arty side of medicine. The amazing artwork was provided by the very talented Jacob Stevens. Seriously check out his artwork at Jacobstevens.co.uk Get in touch all the usual places Twitter @TheColouredRx and Instagram @colouredpresciptionpod

A collaboration with Time Well Wasted's Faisal on mental illness and wellbeing. Medical school has limited time to teach a lot of topics and many key areas can get missed. It is obvious that there are many issues with how mental illness are taught in medical school. We think that and we went to one, where there was a mental health and wellbeing focus! So what can we do better? How can future docs and current ones too make medicine a less hostile environment for patients who survived abuse or trauma?Can people who have serious mental illnesses become doctors? Like this collaboration? Tell us on YouTube:Time Well Wasted And Instagram (coloured prescription pod) and Twitter (The coloured Rx)

In this episode the CP takes a cautious look at the Health at Every size movement. With only one musical interlude this is a more serious episode about the darker side of the fat activism movement.Keeping it medical there is a raft of information about the risks of obesity but the HaES community are fighting that. Can you be healthy at every size? Is medical bias against individuals with obesity increasing their morbidity and mortality?Do you get as excited as Lara about physics?!

In this final episode we celebrate the last of the 12 days of Christmas and think about our future as working professionals, the pod after 3 months of it being out there in the world and how this global panoramic has changed our priorities. We also wish our fellow final year students the best of luck as we head into exam season. We thank our friends who have been keen listeners and so kind in their feedback. 

Not technically surgery but obs and gynae is a surgical speciality so we are allowing it. In Vitro Fertilisation is still a controversial step towards creating a family despite developments in technology and wider popularisation of IVF/Egg freezing. IVF is expensive and its allocation to people trying to conceive can cause distress. How much medical/support should people be given to help them conceive? Are doctors playing God? Does life begin at conception? Listen now to find the answer to none of these questions. 

In this episode we discuss a piece of surgical history: Vagotomies.Originally done for peptic ulcer disease, this is now an almost obsolete surgery. What will surgery look like in another 20 years? Will Interventional radiologists take over everything? Will Rafiah remember how to pronounce vagotomy? So many questions in just 10 short minutes.

Day 8 and Whipple's ProcedureThe only eponymous surgery in the whole list. The honour belongs to Dr Allen Whipple because it seems he was an absolute legend.  Whipple was a bold surgeon who just removed most of the pancreas and small intestine instead of taking bit of organ piecemeal. His operation pioneered in 1945 and developed into the 40s is still a formidable operation close to a century later.This was the surgery that tipped Lara to the shiny cutty side. It seems every med student has a moment where they realise that surgery is or really isn't for them. 

In what is turning into an unintendedly sexy theme we talk about stoma surgery, breaking bad news and living life. A short episode to welcome you into the New Year Stoma creation is a surgery that does necessitate some lifestyle changes but the prevalence of social media means that people can now see people who look like them, have the same conditions as them having full and rich lives. Stomas are often done as part of a cancer treatment although they are used for other diseases. Telling someone that they may need a stoma for the rest of their life can be a difficult conversation. There are difficult conversations everyday in medicine and when is the right time to have one, especially when there is an optional element.