2ND YEAR IS ALMOST OVER!!! but they sure aren't making it an easy good-bye....

Just to recap since my last post:

1- i learned how to get dressed and scrub into a surgery. ill be using this newly acquired skill during my surgery rotation which will be in the spring of 2012 so of course, I will have forgoten it and will need to be re-taught on the first day so i dont contaminate an operating room, operating tools, an operator [surgeon] or worse...the operatee [patient].

2- i have had several new patient encounter experiences since my last post. I can narrow them down into 'awkward' and 'uneventful.' Awkward = learning to tell a patient she has breast cancer and needs to have a biopsy and then have her scream and give you attitude for 5 minutes.... then 2 minutes later [with a new 'patient'] having to tell a 'grandma' that her 'grandson' has died in the hospital and then have her cry for 3 minutes while i thought of words to console her with. seriously, these are the two situations i was put in during the "learning to break bad news" part of my education.
Moving on to the uneventful= a pediatric standardized patient [some kid they got to come in and 'act'] ended up being a 14 year old pretending to be an 11 year old with a knee injury. *yawn* I was expecting it to be something like "here is my 6 year old son with an ear-ache that is afraid of doctors and you need to check his ears....ready, go!" Unfortunately/fortunately it was not that difficult.

3- My last Montclair shift was in the last week of March and I saw 3 patients. One of which was a 30yo female with a HUUUUUGE goiter on her neck from hyperthyroidism [it was pretty rad].The other two patients were cool but more of the usual HTN/DM II [Hypertension/ type 2 diabetes...im expecting you too remember that for next time i write it...cause I will probably be writing it a lot during my rotations].

4- Dermatology is over [passed!], Pediatrics is over [got an A-- dont be too proud the class average was an 89%], OMM is over [did really well too!], now Monday we have an Emergency Medicine test and Geezers Galore...i mean Geriatrics.

To recap:
Derm test April 4
Peds test April 18
OMM Practical exam April 20
OMM Written exam April 21
Essentials of Clinical Medicine written final April 21
Emergency Medicine exam April 25
Geriatrics exam APril 25
Advanced Cardiac Life Saving exam- Saturday [yes, saturday] April 30th
+ BOARD STUDYING....

then next week we get CPR certified and some other cool stuff to prep us for rotations

then the next week we have 8am-5pm class everyday for Rotations Orientation week...i bet 50% of the week consists of lectures entitled "Professionalism." Its ok though, i plan on sitting in the back with headphones while i study for boards :)