We've Crossed the Half Way Point!

Well this post is way, way over due. I dont really know if many people are really following this blog or not, but I guess I will keep typing away. Maybe somebody will come across this sometime.

Anyway, my absence from this blog has been due to the fact that I have a lot of free time on my hands and have been spending it playing my guitar, video games, and spending time with my girlfriend ... .... Yea, yea I know you aren't buyin it, of course that is a lie. I have had my face in the books for the past month and a half now first learning about the kidneys, and then OB/GYN (female-land as my anatomy prof put it)!!

But there is some good news to be shared, we have finally made it to the half way point through the first year!!! That is definitly something to celebrate, and boy did we as a class after our OB/GYN module exam. It feels good to sit back and realize how far my class and I have come in just this short 6 month period. I gotta hand it to my program, it really does a good job. Despite all the bickering, doubt and reisistance on our part, I think I can say that I have finally come to the realization that this is just how things are in PA school. It's stressful, and at times seems impossible, but some how we are getting through it, learning a ton, and slowly but surely becoming clinicians.

Right now we are on Spring break which could not have come at a better time because I was starting to get a bit burned out, crispy even. I know what you are thinking, "Again M-R?" Yes .. again. I swear, it's a wonder that we made it through last semester. We went pretty much straight through until Christmas break (besides the two days we had off for T-Day) and had one of the more difficult modules (Cardio) right at the end before break. No wonder a portion of us were thinking we weren't going to be able to make it. That's a long time going at a constant 150mph with no stops along the way. -- I am enjoying Spring break, even though I did not actually go on a trip. It has been great catching up with friends/family and being able to actually see my GF for longer than a couple of hours before I would go to the library again. Heck, I even got a chance to pick up the ol' guitar and play a few songs. The other thing that we have been working on accomplishing is getting this house back in order. It got crazy there for a little while!! I mean I am no clean freak or anything, but there comes a point when enough is enough and that point came and went, but neither of us had the time to get on it. So that was definitly the first thing to get caught up on.

All in all things are going pretty well. I did really well on the renal exam (the second hardest exam of the year), which felt great and gave me a little boost in my confidence. I did well on the OB/GYN exam as well. I tell ya, I am really glad to be done with that module! The one nice thing about that module was I didn't have any moments where I was thinking, "Crap, I think I have that!!" during lecture :-)

I finished up my last week at the family practice clinic I was at for my mentoring. It was a great 6 weeks, and I am going to miss working with my PA and the rest of the staff, and patients. I hope that the rest of my mentors are as easy going and as great of a teacher as this one was. On my last day, I got to do two knee injections on my own!! That was pretty sweet I must say, and to add to it I didn't hurt the patient when I did it either! I was pretty nervous, but had to keep my poker face on and act like I had done it a thousand times before. -- I am starting to gain some confidence in my clinical skills and decisions, even though that isn't necessarily the point of mentoring. Yet, it still surprises me when I throw out a correct suggestion to my mentor of what a patient may have going on with them or what the plan should be. I swear I am going to catch the person who whispers those ideas in my ear one of these days!! :-)

M-R

1st Day of Mentoring

So, as the title says, I had my first day of mentoring this past Wednesday. It was a lot of fun! Let me back up a couple of days though. Before we go to on our mentoring we were supposed to call a couple days ahead of time and find out what time we should show up, how we should dress, anything that we should bring (stethoscope, otoscope, courage), and just in general anything we should know about before we get there. Well I tried getting ahold of my mentor, and his office was closed when I called. So I waited until the next day I could call and he wasn't at the office because he only works there part time. Great! lol Well he left his cell phone number for us to be able to contact him by, but for whatever reason I have this thing with calling a professional of sorts on their personal phone. Does anyone else feel that way? I don't know maybe I am just weird or something. Anyway, I ended up calling on his cell and leaving a message on his voicemail. Of course, as my luck would have it, he calls me back right when I am about to get into my car to go get dinner quickly because my girlfriend had to get going for work soon. Oh well, no big deal, just figures I guess :-)

We got to talking on the phone about the details of what was going to happen on Wednesday. Well after all of the official stuff I had mentioned to him that I was pretty nervous. He told me to not be nervous, that truthfully at this stage of the game he really doesn't expect a whole lot from me since I am only about half through the first year! He said that mentoring is something that is supposed to be fun and a way of getting your nose out of the books for a bit, getting to actually see some things in the real world and learning some things along the way. He said most of my learning will come next year when I am actually doing rotations and seeing patients everyday all day. (Yikes!) After our conversation I felt a little more relaxed because he sounded like a really nice guy and made me kind of realize that they weren't going to throw me into a room with a complicated patient problem and expect me to know exactly what to do and solve the problem, all on my own!

Well, even with the conversation we had on the phone, when I turned the corner Wednesday morning and could see the building of the practice I started to get pretty nervous, not as much as I expected, but certainly enough. I got into the office, introduced myself to the lady behind the desk (one of the nurses) and should told me to go on back and that my mentor was in with a patient and that I should just go on in. I got into the room and was greeted with a pretty warm welcome from both my mentor and the patient, which was quite nice and sort of set the pace for the rest of the day.

I didn't do a terrible amount of stuff this time, but I expect it was sort of a "here's the office, and this is what we do here" kind of 1st day. I got to do a heart and lung exam on just about every patient we saw and was able to ask the patient questions that I had and got an idea of how charting outside of the classroom, actually goes!

All in all I think it was a really good first day. My mentor is an awesome guy and a truly caring provider. Also, the rest of the staff really made me feel like part of the "fam" right away, which was really nice. I feel very fortunate to have this as my first mentoring site. Oh, and probably one of the coolest things was I got to order my lunch from Red Lobster because we had a rep come to the office! Ha ha! It was a pretty good day! :-)

However, we are only at the office for the first part of every Wednesday, and then it is back to lecture! I left the clinic on a high and then was brought right back down after a 5 hour renal lecture!! It was an interesting mix of feelings throughout the day. From nervous to drained and everything in between.

We are a little more than half way through our renal module. I am a bit behind on some things, so I am hoping to get all caught up this weekend. I honestly love the weekends because everything just stops for a couple of days and we get to make a mad dash to figure out what in the hell they were talking about! :-)

Oh, and BTW, the Derm module went really well. I either studied really well, the test was fairly easy or maybe a combination of the two. Whatever it was, it felt nice coming back from a break and rockin a module that was only 1 week long! Especially after not doing to well on the last module that we had before Christmas break (Cardio).

Keep fighting the good fight!

M-R

Mentoring Setup Woes

Well today I sort of get an ear full. Not really bad, but enough to make me realize I messed up! Yikes!

Let me explain ... before school started in the Fall we got this packet of info that had a bunch on information in it and some instruction on what to do with some of it. Part of that information regarded immunizations. Well, to try and make a long story short, I misunderstood what it was that we were supposed to do with our immunization information and almost ended up not being able to mentor. What happened was I thought, for some reason, that the only reason they wanted us to give our imms records to our student health center was so that they could look it over and tell us what we were missing and what not. For some reason it didn't click in my mind that the only way they can verify that we actually have our imms done is if we give them the information that we have on them. So instead I found my information on the MCIR (which is basically a database of imms records from childhood on) and found out what I was missing and what I needed to get. So I went and got that stuff done. Turns out I was supposed to give that info to our health center on campus as well! OOPS! So now I have to get up earlier than needed for class so that I can figure out this mess, because we need to send out this info to our mentoring sites by Monday.

Moral of the story? GET YOUR IMMUNIZATIONS AND THE TITERS DONE AS SOON AS YOU CAN!! It is just a mess when you don't follow/understand the directions completely lol! Also, for the parents out there, make sure your kid gets his imms done on time and when they are young. It's a pain to deal with when you are older and you have received your Hep B shots from three different providers!!!

M-R