Week 3 of Toxicology

This week has gotten surprisingly busy. I've been reading for tox, working on my research protocol (though not as much as I would have liked), and finishing my research fellowship application. I'm still really enjoying tox. Wednesday we had a big snowstorm, and the resident and the other med student couldn't get over to Case. So I was the only one who made it in, and the attending and I went over that day's cases. We had a bunch of adult patients who tried to overdose on anti-psychotic drugs. I've gotten to know the psych drugs pretty well on this rotation, because they seem to be one of the more popular classes of drugs that people take when they try to commit suicide.

On Thursday, there was a mock LCME re-accreditation visit for Case. LCME is the organization that accredits medical schools, and Case is due for its re-accreditation visit in March. Most of the meetings are with faculty and administration, and then there are two meetings with students. The first one is for M1s and M2s, and the second one is for M3s through M5s. There were four of us, one M3 and one M4 each from the UP and CCLCM. We got asked about things that students had complained about in the survey last spring, like the OB/gyn rotation and student health services. Other questions were things like what we would do if we got stuck with a needle (call the exposure hotline) and what goes into our dean's letter if we have to remediate a competency (beats me, and I plan to never have to worry about this). I think now I am going to be asked to go to the real meeting too.

This afternoon I had my Friday research seminar at CCF on medical decision making. The first half on prediction tools was really interesting, and the second half on cost-analysis gave me a nice hour to daydream. At least I didn't fall asleep, which is more than I can say for a few of my classmates. ;-)