I am a new guest blogger on this site and I thought I’d tell you all a little about myself. I’m a prospective medical student who is hoping to go to medical school next year (2013). My current interests in medicine lie in the fields of oncology and cardiology, although of course that is liable to change as I explore other branches of medicine. As for work experience, I have undertaken a couple of weeks in my local hospital and have also spent time at a scientific research lab. I hope that you will read and enjoy my posts, and please feel free to ask me any questions.

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Are you a doctor, medical student, prospective medical student, nurse, healthcare worker or an expert in a particular medical or health field or do you have personal experience of a medical condition. Are you applying for university in 2013 to study medicine or a medical related subject ?

If so please do get in touch-we would love to hear from you. You can write about anything health & medicine related that you think our readers may be interested in & post links to other relevant medical or health websites if you wish. You can even write about the ups and downs of applying for medicine & share your experiences. You can do this anonymously if you prefer.

If you would like to be a guest medical blogger please do get in touch by e-mail to kate@valuemed.co.uk or by posting in comments and we will contact you. Any e-mail address that you post in comments is kept private and will not appear on the blog.

Earlier this month the french president announced coming legislation that will require all drivers in France to carry a breathalyzer kit in their car.

The new legislation is planned to come into force spring 2012 and is a move by the french president Nicolas Sarkozy to cut the high numbers of serious accidents & deaths on french roads, many attributable to alcohol.

The idea behind the move is that it should mean that more drivers will think before they drive.  Am I fit to drive?

 The presence of the alcohol breath test kit in the car will make them more likely to test themsleves, and then knowing that they are over the limit will reduce the numbers of drivers drink driving.

Evidence suggests that many drivers do not knowingly break the drink driving laws. They think that they are ok to drive. This new move should take the ambiguity out of the situation.

It is important to know that the french drink driving prosecution levels for normal drivers (0.05 BAC for all EU countries ) are lower than the UK’s (0.08 BAC) and this can catch british drivers out when they are travelling abroad. This means that a blood alcohol level that would be below the prosecution levels for UK may well be above the prosecution level in France or rest of EU.

This new legislation is important for anyone travelling to France to be aware of. The french police will be given powers to stop drivers and drivers found to be without breathalyzer kit in their car will face fines. Of course if you are found to be over the limit you will face prosecution.

It will be interesting to see if this new move reduces levels of drink driving. My gut feeling is that it will. If drivers breathalyse themselves and find that they are over the limit most will I think, wait, have a coffee and let their alcohol levels come down. Some may choose to leave the car and get a taxi, a bus or a lift. Most drivers will not wish to risk the terrible consequences of drink driving.

The french move raises some interesting questions;

•  Are the current UK drink driving prosecution levels set too high ?
• Should the UK drink driving prosecution levels be brought down in line with rest of EU ?
• Would similar legislation in UK regarding drivers having personal breathalyzer kits in their gloves boxes help reduce drink driving levels in the UK and cut the number of serious accidents & deaths on the roads ?

Let us know your thoughts in comments.

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Having worked previously in the NHS for many years I had been eligible for flu vaccination through my occupational health service or my local GP. When I changed jobs this was no longer part of the package and I went for several years with no flu vaccination. I had asked at my local GP surgery if I could pay to have a flu vaccine, but this was not a service that they were offering.

I was very excited last year when I spotted a pharmacy in a nearby town offering the service so I went along and booked an appointment to have the jab later that day. The young pharmacist was very nervous and had clearly not done many of these (I later found out I was his first paying customer ) He encountered a problem getting the air bubble out of the syringe and after trying several pre-loaded flu vaccine syringes he advised me he would be unable to do the flu vaccination, and that I would have to come back another day when they had more of the pre-loaded syringes in. I returned several weeks later  as I thought by this time he would have gained in expertise, but he was still very nervous, but did thankfully manage to successfully give me the vaccination. He later told me that I was his second successful flu vaccine paying customer as the uptake had been very poor in the area. He had been on a training course to learn injection techniques but I wonder how much practice he had had on live humans (it is very different to injecting an orange or dummy)

This year I saw another local pharmacy was offering the flu vaccination service and decided to give it another go, as last year I did not succumb to flu. I booked an appointment and yesterday I had my vaccination. It was a very different experience but unfortunately not in a good way. The pharmacist rushed the injection and in fact injected me with a fairly large amount of air which alarmed both her and me (although I did not let on to her that I knew what she had done & she worryingly did not admit it to me) She then repeatedly asked me if i was ok and if I felt faint. I felt quite anxious following the experience but thankfully it is now 24 hours later and I am fine-touch wood apart from a large bruise & egg sized swelling on my upper arm ! (not usual after a flu injection)

This experience set me to thinking & concluding the following;

• I wish that I had not gone to the pharmacy for the injection. I do not feel the staff that I dealt with this year or last year were competent enough at performing the injections unsupervised
• I wish that GP’s would offer this service to their patients for a fee-the nurses at the local surgery are fully trained & are great at giving injections (they get plenty of practice)
• I have had many injections over the years and these 2 were by far the worse experiences that I have had, and have put me off going to a pharmacy again for an injection
• What training does a pharmacist have before they are allowed to administer injections to the public ?
• Do the pharmacists feel competenet to be doing the vaccines or is it something they are being pressured in to by the company ?

If you do decide to have a flu shot at your local pharmacy it may be worth asking the pharmacist who is going to administer the shot the following:

• How many vaccines they have given this year ?
• How much training did they receive on live patients ?
• How many flu vaccines have they given this autumn 2011 ?
• Would they have a vaccine in a pharmacy or would they rather go to a practice nurse ?

I welcome your comments

How could this happen I ask myself ? This has never happened before in 23 years of driving. What has been different this week ? How did I forget to fill up ?

I started to think about health & these thoughts prompted me to write a blog post & think further about

• how often do we run our bodies on empty ?
• what are the signs that we are running on empty ?
• how do we fill our bodies tank up when we feel like we are running on empty ?
• how does it affect our health ?
• how does it effect our families ?

Fortunately my lack of petrol is fairly easily solved, but that is not always the case with our bodies, health & relationships . How often do we take our health & relationships for granted and forget to fill up our ‘fuel tanks’ ?

I welcome your comments & ideas.

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