Medical School!
Okay, so medical school started last week, and I've made it through the first week at Miskatonic U. Throughout this time, I have met many of my classmates, and am realizing that it is true what they say about med students - they're all freaks. This most likely has to do with the fact that all of them were pre-med at some point.
At any rate, a lot of our curriculum consists of sitting in small groups and working together. So I suppose if everyone in the group were very serious and motivated, this would work out very well and I really wouldn't have anything to write about. Since this post exists, this is obviously not the case. A lot of the people in the group, are, for lack of a better word, retarded.
Case in point, in the first group I was in met to discuss a book which we were required to read. During the discussion, most people were silent, except for this one girl, who I will be calling D-Cups for the rest of time. I am giving her this name, because she was wearing clothes that were solely designed to place her breasts on display. I intended to place a picture here to show exactly what she was wearing, but apparently it's such a huge slutty/fashion faux-pas that it just wasn't accessible in a GIS, because it would constantly pull up porn. She was wearing an A&F sweater with a zipper in the middle, which she had zipped down to just underneath her breasts, and a very tight white shirt resembling a man's undershirt, which allowed her boobs to essentially rest on top of the sweater's opening. Which, as we all know, is exactly what female professionals should all do if they want to be taken seriously. So long story short, she pretty much vehemently disagreed with everything I had said about the book. And when I brought up various scenes of the book that completely falsified her points, she would just get louder and more irritated. For whatever reason, she was hell-bent on disagreeing with me, and saying anything and everything she assumed that our faculty facilitator would agree with. Apparently she was at least halfway competent, as she (the faculty facilitator) was always siding with D-Cups, despite the fact that what D-Cups was saying was wrong! I don't really understand what the deal with that was. Later on, D-Cups admitted that she never read the book. Shocking.
So the next group I was involved in was a group that was designed to research cases. What I mean by this is we are given a case wherein a patient presents to the ER with some odd symptoms, and we have to come up with the diagnosis as a group. As time goes on, we are given patient history, physical exam findings, and basic lab results. Then the group comes up with various issues pertinent to the case that they would all like to know more about, and then they are divided up amongst the group members, we research them, present them to the group, and then relate them to the patient. So I had to do my issue, which was rather simple (they were all rather simple: what are normal lab values, vital signs, what's a heart murmur? etc), and in the process of doing it, I began to think about what was going on with this theoretical patient. In the end, after considering all of the information presented to us: history, examination, symptoms, labs, I ended up coming to a diagnosis after carefully eliminating 3 differential diagnoses. After spending around 45 minutes thinking about it, I just wrote it up into my presentation and explained my logic.
So when the time came to present my topic to the class, I was feeling pretty happy with myself. I explained the physiology of the system effected, the phenomenon being observed, and the pathophysiology behind it. At that point, I made my diagnosis, described some differentials, and then presented my treatment plan. At the end of my presentation, the doctor who was our faculty facilitator (different one from the aforementioned female physician) was blown away by my presentation. He thought that it was incredible that I was able to pull in all aspects of the case to arrive at my diagnosis, and found my presentation of the affected physiological systems to be superb. He then told me that I clearly wanted to be an Internist, and would make an excellent one some day (if he only knew that I was dead-set on plastic surgery, I wonder what he would have said...). At any rate, it was very flattering to have such praise heaped on you after one week in medical school, and I felt very accomplished at this point, and a lot of the worries about the difficulties of medical school more-or-less evaporated after he was done speaking.
An unintended consequence of my work had occurred, however: the group was pissed off. They were angry that I had done such an elaborate presentation, and had further assumed that I must have spent at least 8 hours preparing it (if they only knew that it had taken me around 1 hour to complete, I don't know what they would have done). They then said that we need to lay down future ground rules to prevent someone (read: me) from coming to such an elaborate conclusion without the group's consent. They were also angry that in the process of coming to my diagnosis, I had stepped into some of the issues that they were presenting on. I didn't see much problem in this - after all, to diagnose solely on my own issue would be to ignore the big picture and would assuredly lead to an incorrect diagnosis. And while the patient wasn't real or actually dying, I feel an obligation to use every resource necessary to ensure the correct diagnosis, due to some personal experiences where I witnessed the damages that an incorrect diagnosis could inflict on loved ones.
Anyways, the girl following my presentation wasn't very happy that she had to follow my act. The group already commented that they should have saved mine for last, so no one would have to present after me. She was doing a powerpoint presentation, and the images in her presentation were not working. I think she probably had linked to images that were on her computer in place of actually pasting them into the powerpoint. At any rate, the pictures were crucial to what she wanted to impress upon the class, and since they were not working, her presentation was more or less useless. The doctor had told her not to worry about it, technological issues happen, and he understood what she wanted to do since I had previously used the same kinds of images she wanted to use, and her explanations were good. Nonetheless, she clearly was upset. She was also one of the angriest members of the group after my presentation, and was clearly upset that she hadn't been able to do what I had done, and therefore didn't want to ever see anyone synthesize information in that fashion unless she did it.
At one point, during someone else's presentation, she abruptly got up and left the room. She returned around 15 minutes later, towards the end of class. When the doctor told everyone that they had done a great job, and that he was very pleased with us all, this girl just burst into tears and started blubbering like a little kid who had just injured themselves. At this point, everyone fortunate enough to be located away from her made a bolt for the exit, and avoided the awkwardness that followed. She was seated between myself and the doctor, and the doctor's response was to state, "Well, medical school can be stressful..." I was thinking to myself, "You're going to be dealing with patients in the future. Grow the hell up, when something doesn't go your way, don't just cry about it. Learn from it and do something about it." I mean really, your powerpoint runs into technical difficulties and you made the wrong diagnosis. Just make sure the powerpoint works in the future, and be happy you didn't misdiagnose a real patient, and then try to think of where you went wrong in your thought process to ensure that next time, you'll do better. Everyone makes mistakes (myself included, hard as it may be to believe). How someone responds to their mistakes is a true testament to their integrity, maturity, and character.
I don't know what to say about how she acted. Such immaturity at this age is simply inexcusable. No one said anything that was even remotely critical of her and her work. Just makes me wonder how crazy my classmates really are.
At any rate, a lot of our curriculum consists of sitting in small groups and working together. So I suppose if everyone in the group were very serious and motivated, this would work out very well and I really wouldn't have anything to write about. Since this post exists, this is obviously not the case. A lot of the people in the group, are, for lack of a better word, retarded.
Case in point, in the first group I was in met to discuss a book which we were required to read. During the discussion, most people were silent, except for this one girl, who I will be calling D-Cups for the rest of time. I am giving her this name, because she was wearing clothes that were solely designed to place her breasts on display. I intended to place a picture here to show exactly what she was wearing, but apparently it's such a huge slutty/fashion faux-pas that it just wasn't accessible in a GIS, because it would constantly pull up porn. She was wearing an A&F sweater with a zipper in the middle, which she had zipped down to just underneath her breasts, and a very tight white shirt resembling a man's undershirt, which allowed her boobs to essentially rest on top of the sweater's opening. Which, as we all know, is exactly what female professionals should all do if they want to be taken seriously. So long story short, she pretty much vehemently disagreed with everything I had said about the book. And when I brought up various scenes of the book that completely falsified her points, she would just get louder and more irritated. For whatever reason, she was hell-bent on disagreeing with me, and saying anything and everything she assumed that our faculty facilitator would agree with. Apparently she was at least halfway competent, as she (the faculty facilitator) was always siding with D-Cups, despite the fact that what D-Cups was saying was wrong! I don't really understand what the deal with that was. Later on, D-Cups admitted that she never read the book. Shocking.
So the next group I was involved in was a group that was designed to research cases. What I mean by this is we are given a case wherein a patient presents to the ER with some odd symptoms, and we have to come up with the diagnosis as a group. As time goes on, we are given patient history, physical exam findings, and basic lab results. Then the group comes up with various issues pertinent to the case that they would all like to know more about, and then they are divided up amongst the group members, we research them, present them to the group, and then relate them to the patient. So I had to do my issue, which was rather simple (they were all rather simple: what are normal lab values, vital signs, what's a heart murmur? etc), and in the process of doing it, I began to think about what was going on with this theoretical patient. In the end, after considering all of the information presented to us: history, examination, symptoms, labs, I ended up coming to a diagnosis after carefully eliminating 3 differential diagnoses. After spending around 45 minutes thinking about it, I just wrote it up into my presentation and explained my logic.
So when the time came to present my topic to the class, I was feeling pretty happy with myself. I explained the physiology of the system effected, the phenomenon being observed, and the pathophysiology behind it. At that point, I made my diagnosis, described some differentials, and then presented my treatment plan. At the end of my presentation, the doctor who was our faculty facilitator (different one from the aforementioned female physician) was blown away by my presentation. He thought that it was incredible that I was able to pull in all aspects of the case to arrive at my diagnosis, and found my presentation of the affected physiological systems to be superb. He then told me that I clearly wanted to be an Internist, and would make an excellent one some day (if he only knew that I was dead-set on plastic surgery, I wonder what he would have said...). At any rate, it was very flattering to have such praise heaped on you after one week in medical school, and I felt very accomplished at this point, and a lot of the worries about the difficulties of medical school more-or-less evaporated after he was done speaking.
An unintended consequence of my work had occurred, however: the group was pissed off. They were angry that I had done such an elaborate presentation, and had further assumed that I must have spent at least 8 hours preparing it (if they only knew that it had taken me around 1 hour to complete, I don't know what they would have done). They then said that we need to lay down future ground rules to prevent someone (read: me) from coming to such an elaborate conclusion without the group's consent. They were also angry that in the process of coming to my diagnosis, I had stepped into some of the issues that they were presenting on. I didn't see much problem in this - after all, to diagnose solely on my own issue would be to ignore the big picture and would assuredly lead to an incorrect diagnosis. And while the patient wasn't real or actually dying, I feel an obligation to use every resource necessary to ensure the correct diagnosis, due to some personal experiences where I witnessed the damages that an incorrect diagnosis could inflict on loved ones.
Anyways, the girl following my presentation wasn't very happy that she had to follow my act. The group already commented that they should have saved mine for last, so no one would have to present after me. She was doing a powerpoint presentation, and the images in her presentation were not working. I think she probably had linked to images that were on her computer in place of actually pasting them into the powerpoint. At any rate, the pictures were crucial to what she wanted to impress upon the class, and since they were not working, her presentation was more or less useless. The doctor had told her not to worry about it, technological issues happen, and he understood what she wanted to do since I had previously used the same kinds of images she wanted to use, and her explanations were good. Nonetheless, she clearly was upset. She was also one of the angriest members of the group after my presentation, and was clearly upset that she hadn't been able to do what I had done, and therefore didn't want to ever see anyone synthesize information in that fashion unless she did it.
At one point, during someone else's presentation, she abruptly got up and left the room. She returned around 15 minutes later, towards the end of class. When the doctor told everyone that they had done a great job, and that he was very pleased with us all, this girl just burst into tears and started blubbering like a little kid who had just injured themselves. At this point, everyone fortunate enough to be located away from her made a bolt for the exit, and avoided the awkwardness that followed. She was seated between myself and the doctor, and the doctor's response was to state, "Well, medical school can be stressful..." I was thinking to myself, "You're going to be dealing with patients in the future. Grow the hell up, when something doesn't go your way, don't just cry about it. Learn from it and do something about it." I mean really, your powerpoint runs into technical difficulties and you made the wrong diagnosis. Just make sure the powerpoint works in the future, and be happy you didn't misdiagnose a real patient, and then try to think of where you went wrong in your thought process to ensure that next time, you'll do better. Everyone makes mistakes (myself included, hard as it may be to believe). How someone responds to their mistakes is a true testament to their integrity, maturity, and character.
I don't know what to say about how she acted. Such immaturity at this age is simply inexcusable. No one said anything that was even remotely critical of her and her work. Just makes me wonder how crazy my classmates really are.
Labels: Group, Medical School, MSI
posted by The Angry Frenchie at 3:03 PM
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