Anatomy Lab and PBL

We are still working on the neck in anatomy. Today we concentrated more on the thyroid gland. Besides the cadavers, there was also a plastinated half of a head and neck. I've never seen anything like that before. It's basically a real human head and neck cut in half and treated with some kind of chemical to make it like plastic. It's kind of eerie. I didn't think that the surgeon presenters were as good today as some of the previous ones we've had, but the fellows were fantastic. They were trying to talk us all into becoming surgeons. I'm still not convinced that I should become an ENT (ear, nose, and throat doctor), but I have to admire that these guys are so enthusiastic about what they do. Apparently ENT is a pretty competitive specialty.

This week I am the board scribe for PBL. That means that I am responsible for keeping track of our work on the marker board while we go through the case, and I also will draw our rough draft of the concept map on the board on Friday. The PBL case for this week is about a woman who was in the hospital for surgery and then stopped breathing. Again, we're pretty sure that we know why this happened. My learning objective is to find out what the normal dose of morphine is for patients being treated for pain, as well as how to treat morphine overdoses. We also spent some time talking about the evaluations as a group. Overall I think that everyone was pretty fair with their evaluations. Our group has really come together nicely. We have a lot of very strong personalities, but we've adjusted to working together, and I think that all eight of us will be sorry when we have to break up in a few more weeks.

I was going to go to anatomy office hours today, but Dr. Drake had to cancel them. So I talked to him about it, and he is going to stay after five tomorrow so that I can come by and review the cadavers after I finish with clinic. It's going to make tomorrow a very long day, but I get so much out of going to office hours that I really don't want to miss a week.