Last Thursday was the longest day of school yet. I got to the anatomy lab at 8 to find out that the schedule was changed and the day started at 9. So, I went right to work and starting dissecting to redeem myself for being late earlier in the week. Unfortunately, the beginning of this dissection required that I take a saw and literally take out her (we have not named her) clavical bone. So, with help from a friend, I did it…making sure to not cut anything else important that we had worked on previously. Going through bone is a lot tougher then I thought, makes me appreciate how much effort it takes to break one during sports, or just falling (like I have done several times in the past). I felt particularly sick after lab this day, most likely because I was inhaling the fumes for about 3 hours, no bueno. I changed into my ‘professional’ clothes after lab then had lecture, ate lunch, and then went to the ‘clinic’ to have my first simulated patient encounters. I then had the most mentally draining afternoon and I wasn’t even studying anatomy, it was from all the effort it took to speak with people…
Our course is called Essentials of Clinical Medicine (ECM) and it is every Thursday afternoon. This is when we learn clinical skills like taking patient histories and how to use our equipment. This is the course I will learn how to draw blood in. Anyways, this particular Thursday was as I said, our first simulated patient encounters. Basically, actors that are paid to pretend like the are patients in a VERY wide range of circumstances. And boy are they good!!! They broke us into groups of 6 and we sat in a clinic room. The ‘patients’ would rotate around each clinic room and each time a new patient came, one of the 6 of us would act as though we were they’re doctors seeing them for the first time. We were to practice building rapport with them. Some people came in pretending to be shy, nervous, mad they had to wait so long, and one old lady was just crying the whole time. It was intense!! The two patients I talked with were a young girl that was shy and an older lady that was lonely and basically just came in to have social contact with someone. The encounter lasted 5 minutes and then the actors were given 3 minutes after to give us feedback on how we did. The best part about it is during the 5 min you are allowed to take a ‘time out’ to ask the actor or your peers for help on what to do, or say next if you are stuck. And yes, I did take a time out for my first one because I had no idea what I was doing. The second lady was very easy to talk to and I think I improved a lot by that one.
Anywho, that was Thursday and I am glad it is over. Friday was a shorter day and after class a couple of us went to play pool and relax for a bit (they are plenty of bars right by school, very convenient!). Then I went home and studied for a while. This weekend was fun, I finally got to see old friends and also did a lot of studying on Saturday so it was productive. Today (Sunday) I went to lab in the morning and then slept all afternoon. GLORIOUS. OK, back to the grinding board. Test in 5 days!!!!
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