While my medical school experience officially started last month, "real" medical school started this week. I set out to describe in this post the past week's events, but I kept running against roadblocks as I realized that many people don't know the events that led up to this week. So I really have to start by describing what happened before my first week of school.
I started in July as part of the Generalist Scholars Program (GSP), which selects about 6 accepted matriculants who have a special interest in Generalist medicine (ie Family Practice, Pediatrics, Internal Medicine). While I admittedly don't know what specialty I want to go into, I am drawn to Generalist medicine and to Internal Medicine in particular. It seemed fitting to join the program, given my interests...and also the scholarship monies they offered (I am human... and poor).
During July I spent two weeks at the University receiving a healthy dose of How to be a Great Physician from about 10 physician faculty members. These docs are good at what they do, and they love teaching us about it. While these 2 weeks weren't particularly difficult, the classes reignited my fire for medical school and doctoring.
During the third week of the program, I went out to the boondocks and shadowed an Internist in a city of about 5,000. Shadowed, as it turns out, was a very appropriate verb. I wisked in the door 1 step behind Dr. Johnson(fictionalized), stood behind him while he performed a thorough history, put my stethoscope where he did...paused...looked thoughtful...nodded even if i didn't hear whatever he was pointing out (I'm such a fraud), then returned to my position behind Dr. Johnson.
The real fun of shadowing Dr. Johnson was that I could ask any question I could think of once the patient was gone. I learned alot about the practice of medicine during the visit (quiet time), but I got really passionate about the beauty of medicine between visits (recess). Now, if only medical school would start already...
August rolled around, and I got ready for my first day at "big boy school". But the first week of school was, well, not really school. On Monday, I performed with 3 other students what amounted to a scavenger hunt: Item one, find badge office; Item two find Mulholland lounge and sign lots of forms (yay, forms!), etc, etc for the rest of the day.
Tuesday through Friday everyone participated in Cells to Society. We studied diabetes all the way down to the cellular level (how insulin receptors work), all the way up to the societal level (obesity trends in the US...they're up), and we participated in group interviews of patients who have type 2 diabetes, which is always interesting…but, this wasn't really med school yet! To make it worse, our teachers kept playing up the importance of “keeping up”, basically equating “falling behind” with “you’re a goner”.
By the Sunday evening before "real" medical school, I was a nervous wreck. I was driving back from a wedding in
Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well Sunday night. But things changed quickly the following day.
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