This year, my department is hosing a simulcast for TEDMED 2012. TEDMED is a large conference held in Washington, DC where all types of doctors, researchers, and others with a medical interest come together for sessions and networking. It's large purpose is innovation - sharing new ideas with eachother and coming up with solutions. It has such a large variety of people... Lance Armstrong, David Blaine, Steve Wozniak, Nobel Prize winner, and numerous doctors. I've watched a few videos and find them very interesting. I'm looking forward to hosting them on our campus! Enjoy!!
Lance Armstrong:
How David Blaine proved doctors wrong on how long he could hold his breath:
Exoskeleton:
Showing posts with label in the news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label in the news. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Bridging the gap
How is it going to feel after you have stuck your nose in books 24/7 for 2 years and then jump in to a hospital room and start diagnosing a patient?
As a breakdown, medical school is 4 years. The first 2 years are filled with lectures and textbook material. The last 2 years are rotations. Your 3rd year is consisted of mandatory rotations: surgery, family medicine, medicine, psych, obgyn, and pediatrics. Your 4th year is filled with elective rotations, audition rotations, and applying for residency.
One thing that has been brought to light by a lot of institutions is answering this question: Are student’s prepared for 3rd year rotations? This is when students are required to put everything they have learned in 2 years in to practice (and that’s A LOT of information). Students will be required to answer all of the doctor’s questions quickly and correctly (constantly being tested on the spot). At the same time, they are to remain calm and collected enough to have good bed side manner towards the patient.
Funny story: my 16 year old sister-in-law was in ICU at a children’s hospital this past summer. This happened to be a teaching hospital, where she was bothered every hour, asked the same questions by rounds of medical students, residents, nurses, and doctors throughout the entire day. One medical student was asked to check the discoloration of her finger nails. The student politely asked to look at her hands, told her what he was looking for, and studies her finger nails for quite some time. Writes something down and then stares at them again. My sister-in-law looks up at her mom and they are in disbelief that this student cannot figure out that she has on fake nails! Whether he was extremely nervous or he never had a girlfriend with fake nails before (or any girlfriend for that matter – just kidding!), the family got a good laugh from it all.
Anyways, institutions are trying to better bridge the gap between 1st and 2nd year to 3rd year. Some faculty/doctors have a hard time providing an accurate and consistent curriculum for the students for multiple reasons:
1. Medicine isn’t a field where every day you see the same things. Students are only able to learn from whatever patients came in that day. It is possible that some students receive a variety of cases and can learn much more, where some might get bored with the routine cases.
2. Every institution is different. A teaching hospital will get a variety of students from different colleges. With this being said, each college teaches their students differently. Some might have more/better clinical skills than others. Therefore, the doctor teaching might have to ‘dummy down’ to the basics and bring one student up to speed or choose to move on his or her own pace.
3. Every doctor teaches differently. There is not necessarily a uniform curriculum (due to reasons 1 and 2) the doctor abides by. Some doctors allow their students to get more hands on experience than others. Whoever the student is assigned to can make or break the experience for them. This leaves those ‘Type A students’ upset and dissatisfied that someone else was able to do more than them.
On top of the curriculum, faculty feels that students are just not as prepared (or too timid and uncomfortable) when entering their 3rd year. Here is an article that might better describe the gap: MedicalEducation as a Process Management Problem
This school notices this gap and has already implemented programs to build bridges and better prepare our students for their first career exposure in 3rd year. This year was the first year that they introduced a program called “The White Coat Project.” This program gives 1st years an opportunity to “job shadow” (a term for those business majors out there!) for a few hours about once every few weeks. It is an opportunity for them to basically shadow a doctor of a certain specialty without the stressful environment that 3rd year brings. Students have been enjoying this program because it serves as a reminder as to why they are studying so hard, will give them a better glimpse of what to expect, and calm the nerves come 3rd year.
Funny story: a student came in yesterday morning asking me to borrow a pen. I gave him one without a second thought. A few hours later after he was done studying, he generously gave my pen back. But when he handed it to me, he was only touching the ends of the pen with his fingertips and says “here, let me rub some hand-sanitizer on it because I have been sucking on it all day.” SUCKING ON IT??? First of all, who says that? Biting yes, sucking no! Second, I understand people bite on their pens, but don’t actually admit it when you are handing it back to me. In this case, ignorance would have been a bliss for me. Anyways, he holds the pen ever so gently, uses my hand-sanitizer on my desk, and douses it. Not one squirt, but two or three for just a small pen – seriously!? My pen (after being ‘sucked on’) is now dripping with hand-sanitizer. As he is doing this, I repeatedly tell him “No really, you can keep it!!” and he insists on giving it back to me. He notices I refuse to reach out and grab my wet pen so he walks over to the side of my desk (still carefully holding the ends of the pen with his fingertips) and lays it in my drawer on top of all my other pens. Thanks dude!! I ended up throwing my pen away.
One of the services my office offers, is mock interviews. I will definitely be emailing this kid and saying the he NEEDS to come in for a mock interview and work on his social skills. Rule number one on your interview for residency: do NOT borrow their pens! Ha!
Sunday, November 20, 2011
How to date a med student
Fox News wrote an article "How to Date a Med Student" A new friend of mine (also dating a med student here) shared this article with me and we got a few laughs out of it. Some of these are VERY true!
1. Don't expect to see them. Ever.
2. Accept the fact they will have many affairs. With their books.
3. Learn to hide your “ew, gross” reactions when they tell you all the stuff you never wanted to know about your bodily functions.
4. Support them when they come home after each test, upset because they failed—and gently remind them after they get their well above passing grade how unnecessary the “I’m going to fail out of medical school and never become an MD” dramatics are.
5. Each week they will have a new illness. Some will be extremely rare, others will be more mundane. Doesn’t matter. They will be certain they have it (no second opinions necessary.) Med school can, and will, turn even the sanest into a hypochondriac. Date them for long enough, and you’ll become one too.
6. There will be weeks you'll forget you even have a boyfriend—friends will ask how he is and you'll say, “What? Who? Oh....right. He's well...I think.”
7. They'll make you hyper-aware that germs are everywhere and on everything. Even though you used to walk into your home with your shoes on, and sit on your bed in the same clothes you just wore while riding the subway, or sat on a public bench in, you'll become far too disgusted to ever do it again. Believe me, it's going to get bad...you'll watch yourself transform into the anal retentive person you swore you'd never become. And when you witness others perform these same acts that, before you began dating your med student, you spent your entire life doing too, you'll wince and wonder, “Ew! How can they do that? Don't they know how many germs and bacteria they're spreading??!”
8. Romantic date = Chinese take-out in front of the TV on their 10 minute study break.
9. A vacation together consists of a trip down the street to Walgreens for new highlighters and printer paper.
10. Their study habits will make you feel like a complete slacker. For them, hitting the books 8-to-10 hours a day is not uncommon, nor difficult. You'll wonder how you ever managed to pass school on your meager one hour of studying per night.
11. They're expected to know everything. Everything! The name of the 8 billion-lettered, German sounding cell that lives in the depths of your inner ear, the technical term for the “no one's ever heard of this disease” disease that exists only on one foot of the Southern tip of the African continent. But ask them if your knee is swollen, or what you should do to tame your mucous-filled cough, or why the heck your head feels like someone's been drilling through it for oil for two weeks straight, and they won't have a clue.
12. “My brain's filled with so much information, I can't be expected to remember THAT!" will be the standard excuse for forgetting anniversaries, birthdays, and, if you get this far, probably the birth of your first-born.
13. You'll need friends with unending patience who pretend never to get sick of listening to your endless venting and complaints. Or, you'll need to pay a therapist who will pretend never to get sick of listening to your endless venting and complaints.
1. Don't expect to see them. Ever.
2. Accept the fact they will have many affairs. With their books.
3. Learn to hide your “ew, gross” reactions when they tell you all the stuff you never wanted to know about your bodily functions.
4. Support them when they come home after each test, upset because they failed—and gently remind them after they get their well above passing grade how unnecessary the “I’m going to fail out of medical school and never become an MD” dramatics are.
5. Each week they will have a new illness. Some will be extremely rare, others will be more mundane. Doesn’t matter. They will be certain they have it (no second opinions necessary.) Med school can, and will, turn even the sanest into a hypochondriac. Date them for long enough, and you’ll become one too.
6. There will be weeks you'll forget you even have a boyfriend—friends will ask how he is and you'll say, “What? Who? Oh....right. He's well...I think.”
7. They'll make you hyper-aware that germs are everywhere and on everything. Even though you used to walk into your home with your shoes on, and sit on your bed in the same clothes you just wore while riding the subway, or sat on a public bench in, you'll become far too disgusted to ever do it again. Believe me, it's going to get bad...you'll watch yourself transform into the anal retentive person you swore you'd never become. And when you witness others perform these same acts that, before you began dating your med student, you spent your entire life doing too, you'll wince and wonder, “Ew! How can they do that? Don't they know how many germs and bacteria they're spreading??!”
8. Romantic date = Chinese take-out in front of the TV on their 10 minute study break.
9. A vacation together consists of a trip down the street to Walgreens for new highlighters and printer paper.
10. Their study habits will make you feel like a complete slacker. For them, hitting the books 8-to-10 hours a day is not uncommon, nor difficult. You'll wonder how you ever managed to pass school on your meager one hour of studying per night.
11. They're expected to know everything. Everything! The name of the 8 billion-lettered, German sounding cell that lives in the depths of your inner ear, the technical term for the “no one's ever heard of this disease” disease that exists only on one foot of the Southern tip of the African continent. But ask them if your knee is swollen, or what you should do to tame your mucous-filled cough, or why the heck your head feels like someone's been drilling through it for oil for two weeks straight, and they won't have a clue.
12. “My brain's filled with so much information, I can't be expected to remember THAT!" will be the standard excuse for forgetting anniversaries, birthdays, and, if you get this far, probably the birth of your first-born.
13. You'll need friends with unending patience who pretend never to get sick of listening to your endless venting and complaints. Or, you'll need to pay a therapist who will pretend never to get sick of listening to your endless venting and complaints.
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