Hunting for patients

Today I went to the NSW art museum. It was a welcome break from classes. Not to say that classes have been particularly difficult, but it was a nice way to spend the afternoon. The exhibit I went to was artwork from Australian high school kids through a program that allows their work to be shown in a true gallery/museum. It was all very impressive, especially since my artistic skills are minimal. One piece that caught my eye was a cardboard cutout of a physician without a face and a price tag around his neck. The item was labeled “predator”, which bothered me and in the next room was another cutout, this one of a dog with a price tag around his neck titled “genius.” This one I liked.
Writing this now it makes sense although probably not in the way the student was thinking. Especially as first year med students, we do act like predators although with a hint of scavenger. We are told to practice taking histories of patients, so we wander around the hospital, trying to be blend in, asking the nurses if there are any good patients we can talk to. Now good has many meanings, first it would be great if the sickness is interesting, second you want a patient willing to talk, but not too willing otherwise you end up hearing about how their great aunt once removed died from some unknown illness. Although this may be interesting, when reporting back to your tutor, it for some reason doesn’t come across as pertinent. Finally, you hope another student did not beat you to them, since that means the patient has now, not only given a history to the nurse, the initial doctor, possibly a specialist, maybe some other doctor, possibly a resident (technically I know they are doctors too), and a student the patient tends to either not be willing or he leads the interaction because he knows the questions better than I do. Fortunately, there are not that many students at my hospital and hunting, I mean finding patients isn’t too hard.

It is now week 7 of 8 and we are about to finish the Foundation Block. What this has meant is that every week we are given a new case dealing with a major representative illness, heart attack, anorexia, cancer, PKU (a genetic defect in metabolism), and a dental abscess. All of which are meant to briefly expose us to the methodology of analyzing cases and some of the basics surrounding them. In the future our blocks will deal with a specific area such as, musculoskeletal, cardiac, respiratory, etc. where we will have multiple cases dealing with the same organ system for the whole 8 weeks. The problem right now is that my excitement to understand more detail is quickly derailed by the introduction of a new case. Needless to say I will be happy in the next block when we actually focus on the musculoskeletal system.
The foundation block is great though because it does get us acquainted with the system and it allows our involvement in the multitude of social activities going on these first weeks. It seems that almost every night there is something to do, from parties to lectures, all of which seem to have alcohol encouraged, either free or discounted. I kid you not, I went to a lecture/debate on stem cell research and afterwards there was not only food, but beer, wine, and juice offered, for free. Eager to meet new people I have gone to many events, although I have also turned down many nights out to be the geek and study at home. I am working on finding the balance.

Non medical stuff. Sydney does have decent mountain biking!! I have found an engineering student who rides and has a car. So we have been to multiple sites all within 30 min of home and although different from the great NW it exceeds my expectations. Lots of sandstone, (read bumpy) and sand going through the bush. Additionally, I am told there is even better riding, an hour and a half away in the Blue Mountains.

Med school down under the first week

Three weeks have passed since school actually started and I have just been slacking about writing, there are lots of mediocre reasons, but mostly it has been laziness. So the first week of classes was a whirlwind. We had orientations, introductions, and social events. At all of these I was constantly meeting other students, and inevitably the sequence of questions would start, in medical format:
1. Presenting Symptom: So why are you studying medicine?
2. History of Presenting Illness: Why University of Sydney? How long have you wanted to go in to medicine?
3. Past History: What did you study before, where at?
4. Social History: Where you from? Where is that?

The first week was stuffed full with a cursory explanation of all the options we had while going to school and how the classes would run and hundreds of other bits of information that I had forgotten before I left the building. Jargon was thrown around that brought up vague memories of stuff I had read. PBL (a biggie, problem based learning), BCS (also pretty big, basic and clinical science), Pt-Dr. (Patient and Doctor theme), C-Dr. (Community and Doctor theme), PPD (Personal and professional development.) All but PBL are the general themes of what we are going to be taught/learn. PBL is huge here at the University of Sydney and it goes hand in hand with self directed learning, also a big advance in medical learning. Problem Based Learning, is where every week we are given a “patient case” and from there we use it as a means to direct our studying, along with the lectures that go along with the case. Additionally, while this is going on we will be spending one day a week at our allocated hospitals actually seeing patients, at this point I didn’t know what we were going to do with them though, since we really didn’t know much. It was all very exciting to hear that we were partaking in such a revolutionary method of learning.

So along with all of this orientation, I was busy working on moving in to a new place which I lucked out on. I am living with 3 other first year medical students, a Canadian, another American, and a guy from Taiwan who did his undergrad in the states. The house is brand new and beautiful. Oh yeah it was also completely empty. So my priorities were food and sleep. The refrigerator was the first thing to be delivered to the house. Second was my bed and that made it livable. Now after 3 weeks we have gotten a kitchen table, a washing machine, and a sofa is going to be delivered next week. During all this I have learned a few things: I really don’t like IKEA, price wise it is not all that cheap but quality wise it is cheap crap, a bike is a great way to get around, but is not good for taking home furniture (already pretty much knew that though), some people are just cheap and if so they will never offer to pay for anything extra.