Classes and Clinic

Our PBL case this week is pretty interesting, particularly because it keeps getting more complicated and taking unexpected turns. Also, we are supposed to be meeting a patient who has the disease the patient in the PBL case has after Friday's session. Yesterday's seminar was given jointly by a psychiatrist and a psychologist. It was ok, but they could have made it more detailed. I don't know if it's just me, but sometimes it seems like the psych people spend an awful lot of time justifying their field and the work they do. The only other interesting thing that happened yesterday is that I submitted my poster to the CCF art department for printing after class. It will be ready for Friday.

This morning, we had an anatomy session covering neuropsych. The first half went over pictures from our book, and we were asked to locate structures on drawings and brain models for the second half. I only got about a third of the reading done in time for today's session because for some reason, the assignment didn't get put up on the portal until yesterday afternoon. I really hate when they give us the assignments last minute like that. I had actually been more or less keeping up with the reading so far this block until today. :-P

The FCM session was about professionalism, and my small group had a pretty interesting discussion about what to do with patients you just don't like, or patients who you feel you really can't help. The large group talk was all about the life of William Osler, and I should have just skipped it.

My clinic preceptor's secretary forgot to email me to let me know that my preceptor wouldn't be in clinic today. So when I showed up clueless, one of the nurses told me I could just go home. But I didn't want to skip clinic this week since I won't be doing any clinic next week and we are only allowed to miss three or four sessions all year. (I want to wait and miss them in May when I am studying for the boards, not in October!)

I wound up working with a resident and his preceptor instead. We saw three patients. One had a sexually transmitted disease, and oh boy, I'm glad that I am not the one who has to break the news to someone that their spouse was probably fooling around on them. Another one had a rheumatological condition, so that was good timing after last week. The resident and I did a neurological and musculoskeletal exam on the patient. We wound up spending a lot of time in the room with that patient, but it was a good learning experience, and I think we really made the patient feel a lot better. Sometimes just having a name for whatever is wrong with you makes it easier for you to bear having a disease, and that was definitely true in this patient's case.