Coagulation Seminar, Clinical Research Grand Rounds, and Clinic

We were supposed to have FCM oral assessments this morning, but my group lucked out and our preceptor didn't make us come in. I had suggested to him a couple of weeks ago that he just give us written evaluations, though I don't know if that's why he decided not to make us come in. But these oral assessments really are pretty silly: each group member is supposed to come in to meet with the preceptor for ten minutes. Then we would get to hang around until seminar starts at ten, which really sucks if you're the person with the 8 AM time slot. Plus, since the assessment is oral and not written, you can't even put it into your portfolio. Whatever made him decide to let us off, I really appreciate it.

Today's seminar was about coagulation. We were broken up into four groups, and our leader was an MD hematologist. He was really good. We went through several cases and discussed them. One thing that was especially good about this seminar is that we went into more detail on vitamin K and its deficiency. The Hematology for Medical Students book, which I really like on the whole, doesn't cover that topic too much. I wound up printing out a copy of the vitamin K cycle and pasting it into my book.

Our seminar group ran a little late, which was unfortunate because the Clinical Research Grand Rounds were also today at noon. One of my classmates and I raced over to the Bunts Auditorium to hear it. (Bunts is all the way over in the hospital, so it's a pretty good hike from the LRI.) Today's speaker was the head of the Family Practice Department at CCF, and he was telling us about some of the research projects that are being conducted in the CCF satellite outpatient clinics. Having general practice physicians do this kind of work is a fairly new development at the Cleveland Clinic, but the patient volume at the satellite clinics is so large that it's a unique opportunity to conduct some of these studies. Plus, the patients and several of the physicians were really gung-ho about getting to participate in research. The talk was pretty interesting, but I had to leave a little early because I had clinic right at 1:00.

My regular clinic preceptor is still out, so I worked again with the same substitute who was helping me last week. Today we saw mostly mundane cases, except for one really cool patient who was very elderly. He was telling me stories about things he had done during World War II and how he had built up his business. His reason for coming to the clinic was that he had started taking naps every day, which he never used to do when he was younger, and now it was hard for him to play a full round of golf without having to take rests. All I can say is that I hope my biggest problem when I'm his age is that I can "only" play half a round of golf without taking a rest!