As I care for my patients, I will:
- Build a relationship of trust and respect
- Treat patients with dignity and compassion
- Listen with sincerity and objectivity, and
- Value my patients' emotional, spiritual, and cultural needs
- Emphasize preventive care,
- Promote patient education
- Improve access to public health resources, and
- Commit to the continuous improvement of healthcare through social activism
- Collaborate with my peers to engage in effective teamwork,
- Hold myself accountable to teh highest standards of patient care and personal conduct
- Remember that it is a privilege to serve patients and represent the medical community, and
- Strive to extend my influence beyond medicine to society at large
- Possess the humility to acknowledge my mistakes and learn from them,
- Know my own limitations and seek the counsel of others,
- Avoid complacency by remaining abreast of developments in my field, and
- Commit to the education of the physicians who will carry the medical standard beyond my time
Yesterday I was sworn into the medical profession in Severance Hall. I got my white coat, albeit a short one. It was pretty awesome. For those of you not familiar with Severance Hall, it is the home of the Cleveland Orchestra. Basically, the hall is ballin'. That's all you really need to know.
So today began the first official day of classes. The curriculum starts out with an introduction to public health including epidemiology and biostatistics. The day basically consisted of an overview of the block. The block leader happens to be the director of public health and my MPH program advisor. A lot of what was said today was stuff I pretty much heard last year in his public health class, so it got kind of old pretty fast.
While the discussion of public health basics, including an overview of definitions and a contrast of the terms medicine, public health and population health were discussions I've heard and read about in the past, I think it was a great idea for the curriculum leaders to get us started focusing on public health. Public health and medicine are too often sepearated and I think a greater unity between the two needs to be achieved for healthcare in this country to improve. Bold, ambitious and potentially unlikely due to the presence of lobyists and general scumbags, I know. Nevertheless, it was interesting to rexamine the tension between the two disciplines.
The day ended with a small group discussion of a book we were assigned to read over our incredibly short, or otherwise non-existent summer. The book we read was How Doctor's Think by Jerome Groopman. Overall, it was a pretty interesting read (a tad repetetive) regarding cognitive errors made in medicine. It brought to light the aspect of medicine as an art. It was enlightening but also a bit discouraging in its view of patient care in the US. I recommend it. Check it out.
Something nice about the curriculum here at Case is the incorporation of longitudinal blocks including structure, which consists of anatomy and histopathology. Tomorrow begins the structure component. We'll be going over some anatomy as well as histopath among other things.
So if there was one thing I learned on my first real day of classes: I most likely do not want to be a pathologist. I spent a couple hours this afternoon reading our pre-class reading for tomorrow, and it was not a pleasant experience. I'm sorry, but histopath is a snooze fest. It just does not seem interesting to me at all. Besides, it doesn't make much sense. Seriously, I couldn't tell if that virtual H&E slide was a cell or some shit on a slide. I'd rather just push some electrons around and do something cool like that. This is going to be a rough go for me since I've never had any histology, ever. Hopefully it will make a bit more sense after it gets explained to us tomorrow.
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