Pharmacology, PBL, and Last Clinical Skills

Our pharm seminar was awesome today. Pharm seminars tend to be relatively unpopular, and we definitely have had our share of dry ones. But today's seminar leader did a really great job. We were originally supposed to be divided into two groups, but the other PharmD who was going to be helping got sick. So we went up to the library classroom instead, and as it turned out, a bunch of people didn't show up anyway. After a brief presentation, the seminar leader gave us some problems to work on, which we did in small groups. Then we reviewed them as a larger group. I really enjoyed the seminar and felt like I got a lot out of it. At the end, she gave us a table summarizing the properties of the GI drug classes we had covered, which was really nice too. That will come in handy this weekend for the SAQs, I think.

I am still the PBL leader. Our normal tutor wasn't here today, but we had a sub. He didn't say much. We had a ton to do during class, so I had to really watch how much time people took with their presentations. Amazingly, we got through everything: all eight presentations plus the case. I don't think I got as much out of it though because I was focusing a lot more on how we were using our time than I usually do. We have eight objectives again for Friday, but it shouldn't be a problem to finish because we won't have much of the case left to go through. My learning objective is to review the histology of the GI tract. I am not excited about this one, but I know that it's one that will be good for me to do. I do have to wonder sometimes though if I have this hidden streak of masochism....

We had our last Clinical Skills class this afternoon. We have already covered all of the physical diagnosis skills that we will be learning this year. So instead of practicing new skills on standardized patients, the preceptors had us give a brief report of a history and physical on a patient that we had seen the previous week in clinic. I talked about a patient who had been having headaches due to high blood pressure. The session was videoed, and we have the option to make an appointment to review the video if we want. For communications, we did a full history for half an hour on a standardized patient. The one thing that was different compared to normal is that this time, the actors weren't following a script. They were telling us about medical problems that they really have. Coincidentally, my standardized patient also had a problem with headaches. I can sympathize, because I tend to get quite a lot of headaches myself.

This week is spring break for the M2s, so we don't have class tomorrow. I am very happy about getting the day off!