Exam Week

This week is weird. It kind of feels almost like what finals week would feel like back at Rice, the only difference is I'm not pulling all-nighters culminating with breakfast at Taco Cabana at 5 AM. To all my Rice people: you don't know how much I miss TC. It's probably a good thing I came back home for school though, since I end up eating home cooked meals which are quite healthy, not to mention delicious.

The first thing I noticed this week was how short our IQ case was. This week we're discussing medical errors. Tomorrow our group reconvenes and discusses the learning objectives we formulated on Monday. Somehow I doubt we'll spend the entire two hours talking about medical errors.

Today was especially strange since it felt like public health classes all over again, just a bit angrier. Yes, I said angrier: I'll explain. Just to summarize for my friends out there scattered throughout the world, basically, the entire medical school class is split into 20 different IQ groups. While we discuss cases in our IQ groups, during this first block we also worked on a population health descriptive statistics project where we were assigned to learn more about health indicators in a specific Cleveland neighborhood. Today, each IQ group presented their findings in medium group settings of 4 IQ groups/room.

When I walked in my group's assigned room this morning, my day become about 50x better since I saw my MPH program advisor and capstone chair sitting in the front. For those of you who don't know him, Mendel (professionally referred to as Dr. Singer, but he'd rather be called Mendel) is awesome. He's this goofy and nerdy orthodox Jewish guy with this crazy beard. He has 8 kids! He pretty much taught me everything I ever need to know about biostats and most recently cost-effectiveness analysis. I also learned a lot about medicine from him..ok maybe not. But if you go into his office sometime, he has a little game called "med school in a box." Check it out-you'll find it hilarious. Also, don't be offended if he makes fun of you for being a med-student. As a Ph.D statistics/policy-type person, he considers himself a "real-doc." Whatever.

Our presentation went well, and I thiought the other presentations were good too. Afterwards, was when all the fun started.

I think what makes Mendel such a great teacher is his willingness to ask for student feedback and use that to continuously improve his teaching. After our presentations were over he asked for feedback regarding the project. To be blunt, shit hit the fan.

I think it was pretty unanimous that most people were unhappy with the project. Basically it was an exercise in descriptive statistics which many people found ambigous, without sufficient context, and of little clinical relevance. Part of Mendel's job I guess, is to take all this feedback and give it to our block leader, who came up with the project idea (who is a great guy, albeit opinionated, controversial and somewhat disorganized which is unfortunately leading to his continued unpopularity among students).

Personally, I wasn' too thrilled with the project. First of all, I was frustrated that I had to mess with NEOCANDO data when I have my own database of research info that I need to manipulate for my MPH capstone (in fact I shouldn't be writing this blog right now, I need to be working on MPH stuff...). Second, the ultimate goals and expectations of the project were not made clear, and I think that is what also contributed to a lot of frustration. Finally, even after we get all these population health trends, we have to ask our-selves: as future physicians what can we do to change things? As we talk about macroscopic determinants of health I continue to question the physician's role in society. There is so much more I want to read/write/discuss about with regards to health policy, politics and ethics. I won't bore you with these posts now, but I will later. In fact, one of my friends (Gabriel Valle) and I are thinking of setting up another blog to consdier some of these issues to help spur a bit more dialouge.

The session after our presentations regarded our behavioral health projects, where each member of the class was challenged to meet the goal of walking 10,000 steps/day. There was also a lot of interesting feedback regarding this challenge which I will touch on in later posts. I easily get 10,000 steps a day. Actually, that's a lie. I really only take about 2000 steps a day, but if you consider my early morning workouts and converted the exercise into steps, then I'd easily cross 10,000. The only problem is when I'm so committed to my workouts already, the last thing I remember is to convert the numbers into steps and enter them online. Oops. Needless to say, I didn't win any prizes today.

In the afternoon we had buddy lunch. Basically each first year student is matched with a second year student as a mentor. My buddy is awesome. He gave me a lot of good heads-up info for the block to come. He's even letting me use one of his textbooks from last year. Hopefully I'm not sufficiently jaded and overworked to be a friendly buddy for some (un)lucky MS1 next year.

After an hour or so studying some epidemiology a couple friends and I went over to an activities fair where a bunch of extra-curricular clubs set up tables to talk a bit more about their respective groups. In the end I signed up for four interest groups. Psychiatry interest group: duh, it's kind of sad though only about 4 people signed up. Neurology interest group: neuroscience is cool. Emergency Medicine interest group: I kind of miss EMS, so why not? Anesthesiology interest group: wtf? Ya, to be honest I'm really not that interested in anesthesiology (to be fair, right now I'm not interested in it). Something about prepping people for surgery and pretty much being their lifeline while some guy cuts them open just scares me. Nevertheless, I still felt compelled to join. You see, they had this mannequin out on the table. As I walked by I saw a 4th year trying to explain to one of my first year classmates how to intubate. I immediately thought back to Rice EMS and the fun we had doing speed intubations on mannequins. I jumped in and played around for about 5 minutes, intubating the damn thing about a dozen different times. I think the 4th year kind of looked at me the whole time and thought I was crazy. It was therapeutic. Don't ask.

I spent the rest of the afternoon/early evening studying for the exam. I came home, mowed the lawn, played with the dogs, and here I am rambling away. Good times. I'll need to focus a bit harder tomorrow and make sure I have my material down cold. I'll write again after the exam.