What it's like being the medic that isn't so great at maths

I'm not doing a Maths degree. But I suppose with any science-based degree, there is the assumption that Math will play a central role. Well, let me tell you, I have done little more than basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in all of 5 years. Remember all that mumbo-jumbo we learnt about how to calculate the pH of a solution and balance equations in sixth form chemistry? Yeah, you can safely forget that after exams if you are planning on doing medicine. Probably not such a good idea to forget what the heart does though. Definitely keep that one. Save As.

But let me tell you a bit more about myself: I really struggled with Math at school and needed extra lessons. 'How can that be?' you ask. 'You have to get really good grades in Math and Science to get onto your course!' Yes that's true. And in fact, most medics are Math geeks. I'm not so good with numbers but that doesn't mean I'm not good at understanding concepts and the links between them. That's how I got around formulae and equations in both Math and Science. While my peers could solve a problem in a couple lines- 10 seconds flat to be exact- I would still be trying to figure out what the formula actually meant. I found the concepts very abstract compared to 'the knee bone is connected to the hip bone...' and so on. I would take up a page to do a question everybody else did in 2 lines and would often struggle to understand why my answer was wrong. That would then require a whole other page. And probably another hour. You get the idea.

Fast forward 7 years and here I am- about to be released on to the wards in less than a year. A new paranoia has set in: 'What if I overdose a patient because I calculated the dose wrong?' That might seem unlikely. But with the pressures to see more patients in less time, a mother crying because her daughter was just admitted and your consultant shouting at you because you forgot to ring the lab for another patient's latest blood results, I'm sure you can see how easy it might be to move a decimal point one space too far or put 2 zeros instead of 1. 

In our prescribing tutorials, I'm usually the last to finish because, of course, there are some drug doses calculated as mg/kg/min. Even just looking at that makes my brain panic slightly. (Seriously. Who came up with that? I need to have a word) I check and double-check and triple-check and often need a separate page to do my calculations when some people just do it in their heads. Geeks. And I still get things wrong sometimes which is really frustrating. My error rates are slowly coming down though. But I'm not going to lie: I still leave those questions for last in exams.