I've been away from blogging again, school and life have been busy, and the motivation hasn't been there. I recently got a huge boost though - I met a 2nd year CCNM student for the first time, and when I introduced myself, she said that she had read my blog! That is pretty cool, and it really took me back to why I wanted to blog in the first place. When I was doing my undergraduate degree at Laurier, I was considering Naturopathic Medicine, and it was some awesome student blogs from CCNM (Talia Marcheggiani, Navigating Naturopathy - not sure her name and last but not least, Erica Robinson). These blogs were invaluable resources when I was considering school, helped keep my motivated during and after the application process, and have even been useful information during school. So my hope is that I can provide some cool and motivational information in my blog for future students.
I know I've been off with my blogging in the past, but 3rd year is getting really intense with a lot more practical stuff going on, and I think blogging is going to be a great way to let off some of the steam, and reflect on some interesting stuff we learn. I'm also going to post about all the classes again so that prospective students can learn about them a little bit. I'm going to set Sunday as my regular blogging day, and get going with once a week blogging for hopefully the rest of the year, I think if I put it in my schedule then it will actually happen. This will be a big week though, because I'm going to do a quick post every day about all the classes we're in for 3rd year. Hope you enjoy!
So starting today (Monday), here are the classes we're in: (by the way, Monday is kind of a long day....in school from 9am-7pm! But at least we've got a 2 hour common time to relax and see some cool talks or hang out outside, maybe play some sports - like volleyball club!)
Integrative Therapeutics - IT is kind of a continuation of clinical medicine, but with more of a full clinical focus. While clin med was based around integrating anatomy, physiology, micro, immunology and biochem to produce a ddx (differential diagnosis) of potential causes of disease, IT looks at treatment as well, and of course considers what we already learned last year. It's been pretty good so far, some heavy information, but Ellen Wong is a fantastic teacher. She knows her stuff really well and presents a lot of great research. I can definitely see this stuff being directly useful in clinic and beyond.
Primary Care - This is the super serious class/practical of the year. We're in groups of 8 people, and every week we get a standardized patient presenting with some random condition. Each person has to be the "doctor" one time, and during that, they have to manage the patient over 45 minutes as if they were in the clinic - do a full intake and physical exams, and then suggest proper management if possible. The kicker of course is that the doctor has 7 classmates who are busy researching potential causes and can provide feedback and help during "timeouts". The first session was a little messy and I of course was a little too nervous to volunteer as doctor, but I'll get my chance next time. And of course after the case, we have a post encounter probe to work on all week, and then present the case with an appropriate assessment and plan to our TA the next week.
Practice Management - I've heard that this course has been a little messy in the past, but this year, the practice management program has been completely streamlined all the way from first year. Unfortunately I'll only get the course in 3rd and 4th year, but they're altering it a bit for us. New students will have a much better experience than in the past though, and I think this is great. Naturopathic Doctors have an awesome role to play in healthcare, but in the current system, they generally need to run their own business. While it's nice to be philanthropic and help everyone, you need to make money to survive, because if you can't feed yourself and keep the office open, you won't help anyone. I think the new course will really help lead to a more prosperous future for my classmates and me, and it's being run by Dr. Tim Searle who is very knowledgeable and has some great resources. And of course I'm still involved in HEROs this year (which I mentioned in the past). I've got a lot of work to do, but I think I've got tons of great resources to help lead me to a successful future.
Ok that's all for today, see you tomorrow for a review of Tuesdays classes.
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