Pig Ignorant Students

I've posted before on the phenomena of students playing flash games on their laptops, passing the computers between one another in group of six or so. Irritating, rude and hard to understand. Why not stay at home and play, or go down the pub?

My theory: this minority of students are such a bunch of repressed swots that they would feel guilty if they didn't attend each and every lecture. Most of my fellow students are the product of educational hothousing both at school and at home and would probably feel the need to birch themselves should they not attend (physically, if not mentally). I'm getting tired of listening to fellow students conversations: the background level of hubub is unlike anything I've ever experienced during any of my previous degrees (been to uni too often) either in the UK (which was a med school) or in Australis (which wasn't).

I can normally put up with this, but today I had to say something. The irony of ignoring and carrying on a loud conversation whilst an aboriginal lecturer asks for attention and highlights how people's attitudes to indiginous populations need to change seemed lost on the young Australian students in front of me. The fact that the lecturer was effecting a welcome to aboriginal land to all students from where ever they came and was managing to strike a perfectly balanced tone did not help my mood.

However, I let that ride, and said nothing hoping that the students would engage as the lectuer progressed. Bear in mind here that the vast majority of the audience paid respectful attention. This did not include another student in front of me who was taking the opportunity to complete his individual assignment (why do this in a lecture? why not stay at home, you arse?)

Next up, I heard a sniggered comment from behind me when the lecturer informed the auditorium that many aboriginal people lived in Sydney and in particular in a suburb called Blacktown. I looked around to see what the deal was, but couldn't see what was going on or who was having such fund.

So far, so poor.

However, when, during the lecturer's discussion on the intervention, which contained real insights, the girl in front of me picked up her friend's iPhone and started playing some kind of bar tender game. This being the last straw for me, I leaned over:

"Perhaps you might like to listen to what's being said rather than playing a game on your friend' little phone".

The girl at least had the decency to realise that her behaviour was perhaps inappropriate and at least feigned rapt attention for the remaining five minutes.

It's going to take a while before I regain my faith in my fellow students, and the poor behaviour comes from a particular sub-population. Apologies for the lack of proof reading, but I'm a bit angry at the moment.

More on feedback

Following up from the crap sandwich discussion, I had a vague recollection of being taught something about peer feedback and how to make negative feedback as palatable as possible.

And... after spending far too much time going through old lecture notes and searching using Google, I found this* short document based on published work. This document gives guidance on how the nature of feedback affects motivation and also recommends not beating about the bush when it comes to providing feedback - so no crap sangers, please.

I particularly like the "Recognition Grid" which has stuck in my mind since I first came across it almost ten years ago:

Type of feedback / Effect on motivation (in what seems to be arbitrary units)
Generalised positive +100
Specific positive +50
Specific negative –200
Generalised negative –1,000

The point here being that generalised feedback applies to character traits, behaviours and other impossible to change aspects of an individual whereas specific relates to a particular action taken by that individual.

Thus, "I like working with you" is great to hear: I must be a stand-up guy! Compared with "You are terrible to work with"... what is it, do I have bad breath or something and if I do how do I change that?

Final point: negative feedback is remembered for much longer than positive... the taste of crap kinda lingers, a much more potent flavour than sliced white bread.

Reference: Carlopio, J., Andrewartha, G. & Armstrong, H. 2005. Developing management skills: a comprehensive guide for leaders. 3rd edn. Longmans, Australia. 409–410.


*For some reason Blogger is attaching some extraneous text in front of the ANU link. Remove the clearly wrong text if you want to see the file.

Helpful patients

One final note: I forgot how pleasant and helpul some elderly female patients are. It was a nervous group of med students who stepped onto the wards with their ill-fitting jumpers and slacks to take their first histories, but the patients couldn't have been better at putting them at their ease. And I was proud of my cohort: polite, interested, tactful.

Being a crusty old bugger, I found it reassuring to see that the public still are willing to help out such young trainees. Reminded me of the lady in the Doctor at Large (or at Something) film who told Dirk the answers to his OSCE or whatever it was called then.

Mmm... life affirming!

Dress code redux

So, I turn up in the old bankers' bag of fruit and tie having been told in no uncertain terms so to do. New tutor turns up: lose the suit. Ok... so looks like it's chinos then. Mmm...

On the wards

And so, onto the Australian wards for the first time proper.

My clinical experience to date has all been gained in the UK. And in the UK, this experience was either in a London teaching hospital which was a vertical town in itself or in an (ex)industrial northern city's teaching hospitals with mile long central corridors and no heating.

So, first impressions are that this new hospital is a much nicer place to be. It even has an escalator in it, which, I hate to say, impressed me. And I grew up in a town that had not only an Arndale Centre but an Arndale Centre with a large Golden Egg restaurant (I told you I was old) and a flock of fibreglass flamingos in a pyramid which also functioned as a fountain.

So, as they say: Don't talk to me about sophistication. I've been to Leeds.

Moving into the wards, I can't help but make comparison between this public hospital and those I spent time on in the UK:

1) Colour scheme: nice and lively but not too lively here. The UK schemes tended to the magnolia with appended scuff marks all over.

2) Light. My God, the wards here are nice and light. This may be due to the climate, but airy is not a word that springs to mind when I think about my northern experience.

Ok, here come the important contrasts:

3) Four beds per room. Same size rooms, 33% fewer beds than most wards I worked on and 50% fewer than some. There is lots of room for the patients to wander over to the huge windows and take in the view of the posh suburbs (this being an inner city hospital). This also means that only four people share the (very clean) lavatory. Further, it means that seven nervous 18 yo medics and one old dude can fit comfortable behind the curtains to talk to a patient.

4) The place is spotless. And I mean spotless.

5) Modern nurses stations. All wipe clean rather than the old school wooden five nurses to a station affairs in the UK (which I actually like from a design POV).

6) No mixing of cases for the wards. Case in point: in the UK I had a 92 yo man in a pre-surgical ward because they ran out of social workers or something. Nothing like that (yet) here.

7) Many fewer alcohol had washing stations. Because of all of the above, there seems to be no need to have a big potful of the stuff at the foot of each bed. Sure, it's easily accessible but it isn't ubiquitous.

8) Expensive canteen with no fry ups in a breadcake. I'm afraid that here the Australian experience falls far short of the UK experience. Smoothies? Tchoh.

Treading water

A week of treading water... although this uni has much more of an embryology fetish than the last. Ye Gods, it can be complicated.

Other than that, I have had the pleasure of being at the receiving end of the dubious wisdom of my elders and betters, that is to say, those who have completed my current year. Oh, to be so wise with a whole year's post-school experience! Plus, lots of anatomy and physiology which looks very familiar. Still, no excuse for not knowing my head and neck after all of this.

First Aid: UK vs Australia

UK First Aid student requirement: two hours of CPR, Nellie the Elephant and all that. Sign in, sit there, and then you're good to go.

Australian First Aid student requirement: two full days covering CPR, bandaging, breaks, burns, poisoning, hypoglycaemia, hyperglycaemia and, of course, all of the bites and stings you can enjoy here whilst swimming, walking or breathing the wrong way. Final exam with an 80% pass mark requirement with a regular refresher course requirement to keep your certification which current plus an obligation to assist once certified.

I feel I've had my money's worth on this one, although I'm buggered if I can remember every bite which needs warm water and which needs cold.

Seminal Seeds

I've finally managed to get my turntable working after a few years in storage (or in a transport container) and have been going through my vinyl collection which was assembled pre-MP3. In those days, even post-CDs you could only get some music in the original vinyl.

Case in point the Seeds with their "best of" album, "Evil Hoodoo".

Often considered the poor brothers to the 13th Floor Elevators, complete with their own iconic lead singer, Sky Saxon (cf the Elevator's Roky Erickson), the Seeds caught their second / third / fourth wind in the late 80s / early 90s when yet another generation of musicians discovered them. At the time, it was hard to find the original output of key 60s artists; even the better known bands such the Stooges could only be found on horribly expensive imports. More commonly, you'd manage to secure a multiple generational copy on tape.

The Seeds' best known track is "Pushin' Too Hard", their second single. To get a copy of this, you had to buy "Evil Hoodoo", the compilation Best Of compiled by Bam Caruso and release in 1988. This album was still kicking around HMV et al. a few years later which is where I picked it up. They also released "Pushin' Too Hard" as a single but I never saw that on my trawls through the record shops.

The Seeds' singles were an eclectic mix which reflected the era in which they recorded. "Evil Hoodoo" references some of the more quaint themes of the late 60s bucolic psychedelic idyll: "Mr Farmer" in particular is an odd eulogy to the growing of beans. Perhaps these were magic beans. Perhaps they were just tasty legumes. The main thrust of the album is a concatenation of libidinous quasi-Stones tracks with single entendre titles including "Rollin' Machine", "Satisfy You" and the much sought after "Pushin' Too Hard". Listening to this last after a gap of a few years, the track still sounds fresh, if a bit like the theme tune to an old matinée Western, particularly the "Tooo haaarrd" backing singers. Other quite leaden themes on the record, which were probably quite daring in the day, include obligatory drug references (what on earth could "Tripmaker" refer to?) and bohemian free love lifestyle-type songs ("Up in Her Room", "Pictures and Designs").

Overall, the album still sounds pretty good. Some tunes remain fantastic but of their time and I've no problem with that. In my mind, the Seeds always suffered in comparison with the Elevators, both in terms of the music and the myth: Roky was always more "out there", the Elevators' albums were always denser and more numerous, and the influences on later music were always more profound and explicit. Despite this, in my opinion, the Seeds remain an influential band from the later psychedelic era... and Sky's band had a way cooler name than Roky's.

Check out the "Pushin' Too Hard" video on You Tube. Sky Saxon may not have had the breadth of Roky Erikson's writing talent, but boy did he have better hair.