My…Basic Science Website Links

This is just a quick post for everyone who is in Basic Sciences right now. 

In terms of preparing for Pathology and General learning the website Webpath is great. It has lots of images and also question banks on the various topics. It is great to use when you are studying pathology to gauge the progress you have been making and to figure out what area’s you need to focus on.

For Pharmacology Tulane’s Website has a great set of questions which are really helpful to review before exams.

More and more imaging seems to be coming into the boards thus Learning Radiology is worth a quick look at and if you are really keen on radiology there is always the Caseinpoint from the ACR.

My Labetalol…For USMLE Hypertensive Crisis

This is a response to a fellow blogger who has USMLE step 1 coming up soon. I have written a new page with some advice on the days and weeks leading up to the exam: The weeks before the exam. Hope this helps and good luck.

My notes…from the operating theatre

I guess first and foremost if I had to tell you one thing about the OR it would be don’t skip lunch if you can avoid it. Lets just say it get’s hot under the theatre lights and that it’s a lot easier to deal with if you’re well fed.

Having first really read about scrubbing (the cleaning of hands and arms and donning sterile gloves and gowns for surgery) from Sid Schwab over at surgeon’s blog having a working concept of the surgical field going in made things so much clearer. When I first started thinking about it I was a little nervous. Then when I was actually learning how to do it for the first time then I was excited. Eventually to me it was like extended careful hand washing.  I guess I felt in a similar way about what would happen after the scrubbing and went through a similar progression in how I felt about it.

When I was cutting sutures I was told by the Consultant(=Attending): “Cutting sutures is a thankless job, whatever you do you are bound to get it wrong either the ends will be too long or too short”. At the time mine were too long

Everyone who does laproscopic surgery will ask you what gas they insufflate it’s carbon dioxide and not air which has oxygen and would be flammable with cautery. Now you know I guess.

My notes…from the wards

I had thought what I would do was have a guide or list of things to keep in mind for the wards instead I think I will put them into some notes which for the moment I will make as individual posts. 

In order not to leave you empty handed with my first post here is a short one:   Clinicians on the wards seem to like it when you approach a question you don’t know the answer to by taking things back to first principles, it also gives you a good chance to think.

My First… Third Year Post

The whole end of second year the professors would tell us: You will be out on the wards soon or remember this when you are on the wards. When you are working your way through second year you almost don’t believe it and then you have your final day.

Your first day on the wards. All you know is what speciality you are starting in. It’s like starting a new job except it isn’t a job you are a medical student. You are in a new place and you don’t really know where anything is. What you don’t know is that is also the feeling of being in any hospital which is new to you. You don’t know what forms they use or where they keep the blood drawing equipment. So for the first time along with all the practical aspects of working with and looking after patients you also learn the hospital you are in the system and hopefully make it easier for things to get done.

My…Step 1 log

Sorry I have been so quiet. I blame board studying for my absence. Now that I have a little more time I felt I could share some of my thoughts about preparing for that exam.

My…End of term review

All I can really think to say is the first two years of medical school went by very quickly. One minute you are packing your bags to go out there and the next you are trying to decide which things you will be able to bring back.

At the end of the first year I did a little review of all the courses and I will now do so for the second year:

• Term 3

o Behavioural Science (Introduction to human development)
o Biostats & Epidemiology (Evidence Based Medicine)
o Juris & Ethics (Information about the practice of medicine)

• Term 4

o Microbiology (Combined with parasitology this covers the infectious causes of disease)
o Pathology (The process, mechanism, events and characteristics of disease)
o ACS 1 (Introduction to the art of physical diagnosis)

• Terms 5 & 6

o Pharmacology (The different medicines available)
o Pathophysiology (Clinically focused review of first and second years)
o ACS 2 (Introduction to the practical application of what was learnt in ACS 1)

My…Sorry. But I’ll Be Away A Little Longer

Hi all,
To the regular readers I want to say thank you. If you left a post and I haven’t responded yet I want to say sorry. If you are just stopping by welcome.

All that said things are pretty busy right now So I probably won’t get back to posting for about a month or so.

I hope things are going well for all.

As an apology I present the post below:

My…”So you want to write your own episode of house guide”

Sorry if this seems unoriginal:

  I hear that most of the professional writers of various television shows have gone on strike. When I was thinking about the show House it occurred to me just how much most episodes seem to follow the formula.

The formula=

Some people are going about every day life the one you think is going to be the patient is just a distractor for the one who really is the patient.

House finds the case himself or someone has to coerce him to take the case.

He refuses to see the patient and starts coming up with ideas based on the few symptoms he’s collected.

He sends his team to run some tests which most often come back inconclusive.

He refuses to see the patient and decides that they have some disease (basically they pick one at random, as long as it’s not lupus) they then start treating the paitent for this condition. As the patient doesn’t have that disease they invariably get worse at this point or have an unexpected side effect which points away from the disease they thought the patient had.

House refuses to see the patient and either has the team just shoot off ideas or decides that they have to give leathal doses of medicines to the patient to see how quickly they are dying in order to tell what disease they have (I’m not aware of that principle in medicine).

Round about this point most of the patients give up and start refusing the more dangerous and unsupported treatments.

House then goes to see the patient, he lies, tricks or manipulates them into following his course.

Just as the show is about to end House will be talking to someone or doing something when he has a Eureka moment and “cracks” the diagnosis. The patient is saved (mostly) and everyone goes about like nothing ever happened.

Oh and I almost forgot he or his team break into the patients house practically every episode

Now you have the formula I’m sure that many internet users with the time and the interest could write a script for House which would be familiar to most who have seen the show

My…Longtime no post

It’s been a longtime I know. I’m quite surprised that anyone is still around and reading. I have been back on campus for about two weeks now. Term5/6 is here with Pathophysiology and Pharmacology to keep us on our toes. Summer came and went very quickly. But was a welcome break.  I guess you would think I would have used some of that time to figure out what I wanted to write about. But I guess not. I did just finish a great book: Cutting Remarks.

I hate to cut things short. But I do have to run. More soon