Toto and I are going home.
You are here.
Okay, not really. We wrapped up the nuerology module with a section on psych, the purpose of which seems to have been to demonstrate that I will never want to do psych. I got raked over the coals on that last neuro test, so I took some extra time to put into studying for the upcoming cardio test (which was yesterday).
To mark the shift from one module to the next, our first lecture was kicked off starting with a slide of the Tin Man. When faced with such references, I usually feign ignorance and make a joke about how we are going to learn about robot hearts instead of human hearts and some day I’ll be able to say that I got my MD from robot medicine school. This was not a joke that a lot of people got.
So, we are done with the brain and have moved into the heart and the rest of the thorax. This also means that we are neck deep into the physiology component. Phys really hasn’t had a chance to represent up until this point, but we are currently in full physiology mode. In fact, it got to the point where the faculty decided that they weren’t going to lecture us on physiology (cause you can teach people to lock themselves in a room alone until they understand what capacitance means). We had Q&A/Reviews following self-directed “podcast” learning. It seems like what works best is to work through problems to enforce the concepts…a lot of problems.
The physio component has given us plenty of opportunities to learn from problems in various ways. We had another problem based learning session in small group where we were to diagnose and treat for a case of heart failure (decompensation in a patient with decreased heart function following an MI). Then I went to my elective class in the emergency department where they demonstrated that what I had learned was wrong (well, wrongish…there are other things that you do first). The class also broke into groups of four to run an exercise in the simulator lab. Even in lecture, we are working through problems…reviewing the material from notes and the online videos.
The physio-heavy exam was pretty brutal. Each question seems to take about twice as long to think through as most of the other problems, which makes sense. A lot of anatomy and histology can be straight up recall. Sometimes in might be application for a clinical case. But physiology winds up being 4 or 5 answers that you have to consider in the context of the question…carefully.
Anyway, The test is over I’ve got a quick weekend to breathe before a group presentation next week. Then a week and a half before my next series of tests. Histo, anatomy and didactic exams over a period of two days covering the material from pretty much the entire module.
