Index

MBBS Intern

Ward and OPD practice — procedures, prescribing safety, and talking to patients.

Anatomy 4 min read

Pleural Aspiration: What an Intern Needs to Understand Before Assisting

Anatomy, why ultrasound guidance became standard, how complications present, and why this is not a procedure to attempt unsupervised.

General Medicine 4 min read

Escalating When You Are Worried and Nobody Else Is

The intern is often the first person to notice a patient is deteriorating and the least able to make anyone act. This…

General Medicine 5 min read

Breaking Bad News: What to Actually Say

Real sentences for the hardest conversation, why silence is a technique, and the phrases that land badly however kindly meant.

General Medicine 4 min read

Intravenous Fluids: Choosing Them and the Errors That Cause Harm

Fluids are prescribed more casually than any other drug and cause more avoidable harm than most.

General Medicine 4 min read

Nasogastric Tube Placement: The Confirmation Step That Prevents a Never Event

Misplaced feeding tubes kill people. The insertion is straightforward; the confirmation is the part that must never be improvised.

General Medicine 4 min read

Urinary Catheterisation: Consent, Asepsis and Knowing When Not To

The commonest avoidable hospital infection starts here, and the commonest reason is a catheter that was never needed.

Anatomy 4 min read

Peripheral IV Cannulation: Why the First Attempt Matters Most

Vein selection, the errors that cause failed attempts, and recognising extravasation before it causes injury.

Anatomy 4 min read

Venepuncture and Blood Cultures: Getting a Sample That Means Something

Why order of draw matters, what haemolyses a sample, and why a contaminated blood culture is worse than no blood culture.

General Medicine 4 min read

Recognising Anaphylaxis: The Decision That Cannot Wait

How anaphylaxis actually presents, why the diagnosis is clinical, and the two errors that cause preventable deaths.

General Medicine 4 min read

Consent: What Makes It Valid and Where Interns Get It Wrong

Consent is a process, not a signature. The three requirements, and the situations where an intern should stop and escalate.

Always cross-check anything here against a standard textbook and your current national formulary or hospital protocol before acting on it. Guidance changes, and a page can be out of date.