Psychiatric Genetics, PBL, and POD

Our seminar this morning was on psychiatric genetics. There were two parts. The first part was led by a psychiatrist and covered autism. It was kind of rough to sit through, and I zoned out after the first fifteen minutes or so. The second half was done by the same geneticist who came and presented to us a few times last summer during our cell and molecular bio block. His part was a little better, but he ran over time and made us late to PBL.

Today is our last PBL session for this block. On Monday, we will start the GI block with new PBL groups and new PBL tutors. We finished off our learning objective presentations, and then we got to go meet the patient that the case was based upon. He gave us a brief talk about growing up with his illness and described what his life was like now. I really like that we had a chance to ask him questions about some of the issues that came up in the case that we were wondering about. And of course, it makes the case more real to life when you are meeting the actual person that inspired it.

Our POD speaker was from the NIH and spoke to us about child and adolescent mental health. She was a really interesting speaker, and we asked her a lot of questions. Unfortunately, however, the psychiatrist from this morning (who used to be someone she worked under) attended her talk as well, and he was kind of overly involved in her talk. She was gracious about him constantly interrupting her, but still, we wanted to hear her speak, not him again.

Right now, I'm not feeling so great, so I'm going to go home and lie down for a while. One of my classmates had her birthday earlier this week and we are planning to go out this evening.