Hello readers! Welcome to the Cambridge Widening Access to Medicine Society fortnightly newsletter 😊
Food for Thought: an example interview question
How can a seal survive underwater without breathing for 30 minutes when a human can only last 3?
Behind the Headlines
Britain's race to contain the coronavirus: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51481210
This article discusses Public Health England’s response to being notified by Steve Walsh that he had been in contact with the Covid-19 coronavirus and is a brilliant example of public health responses to contain infectious disease.
Outbreaks like Covid-19 occur because infectious diseases are changing all the time. A new human disease such as this virus might arise by genetic changes such as mutations which enable the virus for example to infect humans, or to cause more severe disease such that it gets picked up. Viruses change so quickly that there are often many different ‘strains’ at once and in vaccine preparation we are second-guessing what the main strains might be a year or so later. This is, as you can imagine, difficult!
When an outbreak happens, public health teams first try to define the disease more clearly so that it is easier to identify. They then use epidemiological (population-based) strategies to try to work out things like the mode of transmission of the disease and its incubation period (how long it takes from exposure to the infection to developing symptoms). With this knowledge we can start to put control measures in place, targeting the epidemiological triad of host, agent, environment. Quarantine is one such measure, reducing host potential for disease transmission.
One of the challenges in interrupting transmission here is that 4 in 5 people have relatively mild symptoms. This is a good thing in terms of disease severity but means that particularly in the early stages of the outbreak, people would have continued as normal, increasing the opportunity for disease transmission. Illness tends to be much more severe in the vulnerable, particularly the elderly population.
Link of the fortnight
The NHS news pages do a brilliant job of demystifying and explaining health-related headlines - keeping up with this is a great way of preparing for interviews and staying up to date. https://www.nhs.uk/news/
Myth-buster
“Everyone who studies medicine has wanted to be a doctor since aged 10 or younger”
NOT THE CASE - obviously there will be some people who have wanted to be a doctor for a very long time but this does not invalidate anyone who has recently decided on this career. Don’t let people put you off or brag that they will be better than you just because they decided before you, it doesn’t make you a better doctor!
Food for thought: an example approach
Seals are better at lowering their metabolic rate by having a more dramatic decrease in heart rate and change in blood flow. The change in blood flow ensures that vital organs and muscles are well perfused and other parts of the body are using significantly less oxygen than normal. The blubber reduces heat loss which means less energy is used to maintain normal temperature.
Seals have more myoglobin in muscles, which is a protein that binds oxygen so acts as an oxygen reserve for the muscle. This gives the body more time before it needs to breathe to avoid critically low oxygen levels.
Seals breathe out before diving, unlike humans. This reduces the buoyancy of a seal, meaning they need to expend less energy to keep at a certain depth, meaning less need for aerobic respiration.
Thanks for reading – if you have any questions then as ever please just email us at access@clinsoc.co.uk!
This is the final newsletter from the current committee; we are handing over to next year’s committee who will be continuing with this newsletter. Thank you all for reading - it has been a pleasure :) Wishing you all the very best with your efforts.
Hope you have a great fortnight and GOOD LUCK!
Love,
CamWAMS Committee
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