Latest news with #medicalstudent
BBC News
7 days ago
- Health
- BBC News
Miss World contestant Millie-Mae Adams takes on knife crime
Millie-Mae Adams has spent the past month carrying Wales' hopes as a contestant on the Miss World stage in the 22-year-old medical student has also used the platform to highlight what she calls the "taboo subject" of knife crime among young people. Growing up in Caerau, Cardiff, Ms Adams said she became aware of gang violence at quite a young she left home to train as a doctor, she began teaching young people about how to deal with traumatic injuries, including stabbings."It's really difficult being a young person at the moment and knife crime has become so normalised that carrying a knife isn't seen as something crazy to do," said Ms Adams. It was during her studies to be a doctor at the University of Exeter that Ms Adams said she realised she could put her medical training to good use when she founded a branch of charity trains young people to deal with the physical and psychological consequences of street violence and works across 20 UK cities, including Cardiff."Having grown up in, I guess, a less privileged area of Cardiff, I saw quite a lot of gang violence," she said she felt "quite uneasy as a young woman walking the streets"."I think it is quite naive to think [knife crime] won't happen on your doorstep," she added. "Every young person deserves the chance to be equipped with the tools and knowledge to react to knife crime if they ever find themselves in that situation," Ms Adams added."So instead of kind of blaming young people for the issues that they face, we equip them with the tools so that if they do find themselves in that situation they know how to react."After being crowned Miss Wales in 2023, Ms Adams qualified for the 2025 Miss World contest, choosing to highlight the issue of knife crime and StreetDoctors' work at the month-long pageant in India. She came first in Europe for her presentation on the issue, which was one strand of the contest reaches its climax on 31 May when the overall winner will be announced. Ms Adams and other StreetDoctors volunteers give advice on the key steps to take if they witness a stabbing, including how to safely apply pressure and the importance of calling an at St Mellons youth club in Cardiff, including Mason, 13, said the information provided by the volunteers "could be really useful in future"."We learnt a lot about what would happen and what we would do if there was someone who was on the floor and had just been stabbed, and what we could do to save their lives," said JJ, boys, part of the Strong Minds group, run by Cardiff Youth Service, said they feel safe in their community. Street violence and knives was "something that you hear about more than you see", according to Luke, do other work as part of the group including virtual reality 14, said: "[The scenario] could be an argument maybe and then you've got to see how you can get out of it before it escalates into maybe a fight or a stabbing." What should you do if someone has been stabbed? According to StreetDoctors, these steps could save someone's life: Dial 999 and ask for an ambulance. They will offer you support over the phone. You will be asked why you need an ambulance and where you are. You are not required to give your nameCheck the area - make sure you are not in danger before approaching the injured personApply pressure - If there is no object apply pressure directly to the wound. Try and wrap clothes or something similar around your hands. If an object is in the wound, do not remove it as the object is stopping more blood loss. Apply pressure to the wound around it How common is knife crime? In the year ending December 2024, there were 50 knife offences per 100,000 in Wales. The highest rate, at 67 per 100,000, was in the Gwent police force it was 188 per 100,000 in London and 156 in the West Midlands according to ONS from the Youth Justice Board show that there were just over 3,200 knife or offensive weapon offences committed by children (10-17 year olds) in England and Wales in the year ending March 2024. This is 20% greater than a decade ago but 6% fewer than the previous year and the sixth consecutive year-on-year were far more likely to commit offences with knives with over-18s making up 83% of the media attention on knife attacks amongst young people following the stabbing of two teachers and a pupil in Ammanford, experts warn that knife crimes should be kept in Rhian Croke from the Children's Legal Centre Wales said that while incidents should be addressed it was equally important "not to demonise children"."Most may have never considered carrying or using a knife," said Dr Croke."Preventing knife crime means addressing the root causes."In areas with high deprivation, social exclusion, and neglect, children are more likely to be involved in violence."
News24
10-05-2025
- Health
- News24
Sarah Stein: What they don't teach in medical school
Plenty of people told Sarah Stein that practising medicine would be difficult. Now, as a fifth year medical student at the University of Cape Town, she wishes she would have listened more carefully. I was 21 the first time a patient of mine died. It wasn't like Grey's Anatomy. There were no moments of silence, no beeping flatlines in the background and no weeping family members outside the door. It was cold and matter of fact. The intern looked at me and said, 'There's a hundred more in the waiting room, so you better get moving.' I didn't understand why no one seemed to care. I felt hopeless. The doctors moved mechanically to call the family. The nurses followed protocol. Ward work continued as usual. Someone added 'demise' to the whiteboard. Someone else shrugged, noting the patient had advanced HIV anyway. Self-preservation Later, when I asked one of the doctors how they could move on so quickly, they explained it wasn't a lack of care — it was self-preservation. That was just the reality. Healthcare workers don't deal with death, they separate themselves from it. This might seem heartless, but I think it is the only way they are able to go about their days. The beds and wards and passages are filled with death and sickness, and to not step away is to allow yourself to become enshrouded by it. Death becomes a part of the job, a cog in the machine. Working in a public hospital with way too few resources punches you in the gut every day. It's not just the trauma of seeing your patient die — it's having no gloves in a delivery room; no alcohol swabs to clean wounds; and knowing that nurses stop at the shop on their way to work to buy their own gloves and masks because the clinic has run out. Where waiting times for a scan are months long and surgery delays needlessly let disease progress to the point of being inoperable. It's the limited beds in high care that mean doctors are regularly forced to decide whose life is worth saving more because there's only space for one. As students, we're never truly prepared for this. We're expected to know all the theory. Every system. Every drug. We deal with death as an academic topic. Our palliative care lectures teach us about prescribing morphine in the terminal stages of cancer, and we learn what happens when body tissue dies. But we never deal with how it feels to spend every day in the face of death amid a failing system. No one teaches us how to navigate our own grief. No one prepares us to be resilient in the face of moral distress, to speak out from within a toxic hierarchy or how to balance this kind of work with life outside of the hospital. We aren't taught how to brush off the demeaning comments from seniors, or how to cope with feeling stupid on a ward round no matter how much extra reading you do. Medicine is difficult It's funny — you think you know these things. After all, plenty of people have told you that medicine is difficult. Perhaps I should've listened more carefully. Medicine is difficult. But not in an abstract way. It's difficult in a very tangible, concrete way. It demands enormous sacrifice. It chips away at you. It burns you out before you've even begun. It forces you to be constantly surrounded by suffering. It's hard because you know the system will never change and that it will be hard forever. And yet, there are moments. Moments of humanity. Moments that remind me what a privilege it is to be where I am. In the middle of a rant about a hard day, my mom will reliably tell me how lucky I am to be a medical student. Usually, I find this frustrating and enraging. But deep down, I know she is right. How many twenty-somethings get to witness a baby's first breath? Or see the inside of a living body? Or watch a psychotic patient slowly regain clarity? Last year, during my internal medicine rotation, I had a quiet night on call. I spent most of it with one patient, an elderly man admitted in a delirious state. He was confused for most of the night, but I had time so I stayed with him. I checked in on him often and chatted with him when I could. WATCH | Not enough jobs for state doctors. What does that mean for NHI? In the morning, during ward round, he told the senior doctor that I was the best doctor in the whole world. Of course, I was mortified, given that I was just a student. I hadn't done much at all (and besides he was still probably a little delirious). That patient will stay with me forever. He reminded me of the real value of being a healthcare practitioner. I didn't really treat him, but I made him feel cared for. And that made a difference. But if I am honest, I hate medicine more often than not and cannot fathom spending more of my life doing this. At the same time, I am scared that I won't find anything else as meaningful; that if I don't continue and I don't use this power for good, I will feel like a phony. Perhaps I would be neglecting a better or more honourable version of myself if I chose to veer off. There's something incredible about being there for people in their most vulnerable moments. About witnessing life, death, survival, and everything in between. Quiet, clinical and cold That first patient death still sits with me. Not because it was dramatic, but because it wasn't. It was quiet, clinical, and cold. For the doctors, there just isn't time to feel everything when you're drowning in back-to-back patients and broken infrastructure. For me, a student, that loss was raw. I am not numb from the system yet, and whether it is a strength or weakness, I hope that I never become that. So, I don't know what the future holds. I don't know if I'll stay in medicine, or find something else, or totally change paths. I've considered taking business courses or trying out humanities. I've thought about doing a 180° and studying acting. There's always the chance that I could find my very own billionaire and be a happy house mom. The doctors I speak to think I'm crazy for going through medical school without being sure I want to be a doctor. I'm sure my parents will worry that I'll land up being a complete flop. What I do know is that this work has shaped me in ways I'm still trying to understand. And for all its chaos and pain, I feel lucky to have been a part of it — even if just for a little while. - Sarah Stein is a fifth year medical student at the University of Cape Town.
New York Times
06-05-2025
- New York Times
Street Style Look of the Week: Hogwarts Fashion
Visiting a place you've never been can be a bewitching experience. That seemed to be the case for Hanna Broś when we met in London on a Sunday in March: She was excitedly taking in the sights with friends on what she said was her first trip to the city. They were on their way to King's Cross train station to find a location made famous by the 'Harry Potter' books: Platform 9 ¾. The scarf, skirt and round wire-frame glasses that Ms. Broś, 21, was wearing brought to mind the look of students at Hogwarts, the fictional school for witches and wizards. (She identifies as a Ravenclaw, she said.) In fact, Ms. Broś is a medical student in Krakow, Poland. 'I want to be a doctor,' she said. 'It's just been a dream my whole life.'
