Seminars in Solitude

Last Friday's seminar was on the cell biology of atherosclerosis, and only about six or eight of us showed up. I felt bad for the speaker, but the course leaders probably should replace this seminar with something else next year since we've covered this material several times already. At least the assigned reading was decent. Also, our PBL patient died again. I knew he was in trouble since we spent all of last week learning about things like ventilators and living wills, but I still hate it when they die. I can't even imagine how I'm going to feel the first time a real patient dies on my service next year.

Today's seminars were not much more cheerful. They were about end of life issues from a philosophical or social perspective, and it felt an awful lot like an extra FCM session. To say that these seminars did not go over well with my class is a huge understatement. Some people were actually walking out in the middle. Ouch. The atherosclerosis seminar last Friday might have been repetitive, but my feeling is that it never hurts to review important concepts like atherosclerosis. It wasn't very easy to find much redeeming in today's seminars though. Some of the readings were helpful, but the seminars themselves were pretty painful. Hopefully they will be cut out of the curriculum next year also.

This afternoon, I participated in a pharmacology thread focus group. This meeting was similar to the focus groups that are held for each of the organ blocks, only it was for the entire pharm thread for both first and second years. As much as I like pharmacology and most of the pharmacists who teach us, the pharm thread is definitely not the greatest strength of CCLCM's curriculum. I think we made some very good suggestions to the thread leader, and hopefully future classes will have a better pharm experience than we did.

Our second formative portfolios are due this Thursday, and I'm going to be spending the rest of this week finishing mine up. Other than that, there is not much excitement at the moment. The weather is still completely gross. I can't wait for spring break.