so due to popular request... i've decided to try to remember to blog on a fairly regular-ish basis. :)
we are a month into the fall semester. so far so good, but when i stop to think about it, it is a little overwhelming. our first gen med unit was neuro... so basically in two weeks we learned everything we need to know about neurology to practice medicine. weird, right? i mean don't get me wrong... it was intense. we had between 2 and 8 hours of neuro everyday for those two weeks. after neuro was derm (which we were tested on today). a week and a half of nausea-inducing pictures. eek. and now we're in the midst of cardio. so far, i've decided i don't want to do neurosurgery, and i definitely don't want to work in dermatology, despite the fact that everyone raves about the hours and pay. neurology itself is okay, but i wasn't in love or anything.
the other classes we are taking are...
research and stats (ugh).
medical documentation (ugggh).
(fortunately both of those are only once a week).
psychosocial -- which i like. we start each class with a medical related story or poem and watch a lot of movies. most of the work we do is reflection, so that appeals to my social science/psych interests.
complementary medicine -- pretty interesting. so far we've done acupuncture/chinese medicine, massage therapy, chiropracty and tai chi. and the class enjoyed tai chi so much that we've decided to incorporate it into our weekly routine, having a course in it every wednesday morning before class. :)
pharmacology (eek.)
EKG (piece of cake).
clinical lab medicine (merr...)
interprofessional healthcare teams -- the idea behind it is good, we get together with students from all the other programs (MD, podiatry, physical therapy, path asst, clin lab, psych...) and we have to work on a project together and discuss various things, including the current system of health care. but in reality, it ends up being kind of a joke and a waste of time. i don't think we are really gaining any interprofessionalism through it, which is supposed to be the goal. pretty much most of the school still thinks that as PAs we can't write prescriptions, probably can't diagnose, don't do any surgery, and some of the med students were even surprised that we "actually got cadavers to work on in anatomy". oye vey. we've got a lot of work ahead of us...
so there you have it. nine classes. wow. most of them are only a couple credits though, besides gen med and pharm which are the big ones. gen med mostly. i am thoroughly enjoying gen med and going through the different areas of medicine. i find myself actually enjoying lectures. and i love that everything is so directly applicable to what i will be doing (starting in less than a year!) as well as in my personal life. i've already diagnosed my family with a handful of skin conditions. i'm sure they're appreciative.
so yeah, overall... it's great. intense, but great. we have class technically from 8 - 5 everyday, but in reality we usually have at least one day that don't have to come in until 10 and one or two days that we get out by 3 every week. i have to say that thus far, it's not nearly as difficult as i was expecting. although i feel like i'm losing touch with everyone outside of the 61 kids in my class that i see everyday... i am completely able to handle the work load without freaking out, and still able to take a break and have fun a couple days a week. work hard, play hard. :)
thats enough for now. i've got to save stuff to talk about later, seeing that my day-to-day is pretty much indistinguishable from week to week.
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