Charlie's blog

Well another hectic session of exams is over! After a few good night's sleep, we are back to business!

This semester we were able to choose an option module! The choices were: Clinical & Forensic Chemistry, Natural Product Chemistry, Advanced Cardiovascular Physiology & Pharmacology, Pharmaceutical Technology and Pharmacy Practice. I choose cardiology and we were all lucky enough to get our first choices. So far we have had some gory practicals and some really interesting workshops on the cellular workings of the heart. Sometimes it is all so complicated and clever; I wonder whether it really can be possible that all these chemical mechanics exist inside each of us.

This semester has been another massive step up. The other modules I have are Drug Design and Medicinal Chemistry, Molecular Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Medicines and Therapeutics. There is a much heavier influence on finding things out; learning and supporting your work with novel journals and much less emphasis on text books.

To encourage this way of learning we have more essays this semester, with marks being assigned for the quality of the sources and references used. In science, as in life, the closer to the horse's mouth you are the better. Sources of information are ranked, often in the groups; primary, secondary and tertiary.

At the bottom is the tertiary group which includes for instance text books. Although they are great for learning, they are not good for essays and such assignments as by the time they are published they are already out of date, and usually not written by the researchers themselves. The best sources are articles and published research. These often include the raw experimental data and have the facts and conclusions of what was discovered. These are the best for getting marks because they show your knowledge and understanding and also the effort you put into finding them.

Although it is cutting edge and very interesting, I am so far finding it a little hard with all the sifting through articles to find the few that are relevant to my work. I cannot really do much about the fact that I read slowly, but I hope these modules will help me search for articles more effectively and find what I need, in preparation for next year's dissertation.

Thanks for reading!

Charlie

The belly dance season has truly begun and I am so excited!

As I mentioned in my last blog, October saw the birth of The London Algerian Ballet created by my friends Farah Nasri and Toufik. Our first show was the Algerian Cultural Festival which was held at Rich Mix in Bethnal Green, East London. It was an all day event celebrating the 50th anniversary of Algerian Independence, there were talks, art, musicians and of course dancers!

As we were all belly dancers we had just a month of intense preparation and training in Algerian folk styles of dance. On the night 10 of us did a 30 minute set including Tlemcen, Targit, Oran, Chaoui, Algerois and Kabyle. However we didn't manage to do all the dances as there wasn't enough time to learn all of them and the different choreographies by heart, and change clothes in between each dance. The costumes were so glamorous and elaborate; trust me I got into a pickle a couple of times, but I had the other girls around to help me out!

November held round 1 of Belly Dance Trophies 2012-13! I performed in this heat; it's never easy to go first but I had great encouragement and feedback during the night. I danced a cheeky Shaabi style and really loved getting on that stage again and feeling the improvement from last year.

Performers on the night included my girls; The London Algerian Ballet, as well as Sara Sherif Farouk Ahmed Bless Klepcharek and Maelle Roger. It was an honour to be in the same room with such performers and it has made me even more excited for the next one in December!

The show was in Wembley which takes just over an hour to get to from mine, using over ground and then tube. I always like taking the tube because it makes me feel like a ‘Londoner.' It's quite a good place for shopping and of course the Wembley Football Stadium is there.

Whilst travelling I learnt that as part of tube improvement they are introducing WiFi down there! I guess commuters will like that. Although I sort of liked the idea that the tube is ultra modern, busy, the hub of London and yet you cannot access the outside world from down there; a real contradiction in terms.

Here is a video of a recent show I took part in.

Thanks for reading! Charlie.

Well back in classes and there's no time for napping! Third year so far is definitely a big step up but it's more fun too! The content is becoming more clinical and I have already had a half-day placement in hospital.

Yesterday I had my placement in St. Georges Hospital, on the Gastro-Intestinal ward. During the afternoon we were assigned a set of information (anonymous patient records) to take a look in detail to put what we have been doing in workshops into a real-life scenario. We had to decide what the patients main medical and pharmaceutical problems were based upon all the evidence in front of us; drug charts, patient history and investigation in the hospital.

In two weeks time we will present the case to our peers and tutors to feedback what we found out including if we think the treatment is appropriate and any recommendations we might make. It's a bit nerve racking because we have a lot to do and where to start? But what we have two weeks to do, a ward pharmacist would do multiple times every day.

So my modules this semester are; Clinical Pharmacy, Professional Practice, Systems Pharmacology and Pharmacokinetics and Pharmaceutical technology. They are all very meaty subjects with very varying topics, but this year everything is beginning to lead into everything else and it makes a lot more sense... most of the time... For instance lectures in Professional Practice which discuss asthma leads into the workshops on counselling patients on proper use of their medication and side effects which lead into Pharmacokinetics and Pharmaceutical technology where we look at the technology itself.

We have had several assignments so far too. in addition to the one above, I have had a Pharmacokinetics and Pharmaceutical technology practical write up about asthma inhalers where we were assessing the amounts released by the inhaler and where in the respiratory tract most of it will reach. A practical write up in Systems Pharmacology where we were looking at glucose tolerance and testing our blood sugar levels. Also two presentations, one from Pharmacokinetics and Pharmaceutical technology about a specific drug, and one from Professional Practice about health promotion, my groups topic is ‘safety in the sun' !

Amongst all this I have still got my part-time jobs and my dancing. It all got a bit much recently as I was in a dance show and the rehearsals were really tiring me out. Although I was struggling I really love my dancing and the show was amazing. It was for the Algerian cultural Festival, and we were training under the famous and fabulous Farah Nasri to learn all these specialist folk dances, some of which we had never even heard of, what an experience! The crowd was amazing and I enjoyed every second of that performance! Now I just can't wait to get my hands on a video of the night :D
Thanks for reading!
Charlie