TGIF!

It's Friday, and that means it's the last day of my "what you take in Fall third year" series.
So here's the classes for today:

Physical Medicine - This is just another physical medicine class, but a few times during the semester we'll have practicals on Fridays to actually work on the skills we're learning. Our first session is next week, so I'm pretty excited for that (sitting in a lecture hall gets boring after 6 years!).

Homeopathy 3 - This is taught by Dr. Bakir who taught is first year. I'll give her this, she's incredibly passionate about homeopathy. You can really see it when she teaches and when you ask her questions in person. She's also very friendly and easy going. Homeopathy doesn't resonate with me as much as others, but she's really great if it does for you. This year it's a full year course, and there is going to be a lot of focus on acute remedies - I think this is great, because I think Naturopathic Doctors can have a very difficult time integrating classical homeopathy. There's so many other modalities that you have an styles of interviewing that are kind of at odds with homeopathy, and make it difficult, but I think the acute stuff can work well. Anyway we also are working on a live case which is pretty cool, that started today. We had a very experienced homeopath come in and do a full case intake on a live patient for us, and we charted as if we were doing the intake. Our assignment is to work up the case, and I think this is pretty good experience - better than just learning tons of remedies! We also are going to keep going over another case that Dr. Bakir did with someone and recorded, and because that one is recorded, she goes through it with us very slowly to point out important things.

Men's and Women's Health - In this course, we focus on none other than men's and women's health! Here we look at the same things we looked at in clinical medicine last year, but in more depth, and also integrating treatment modalities. In addition, there is a practical component that involves gynecological examinations and male genitourinary/digital rectal examinations. For the female exam, there are three stations throughout the year. The first is just a recap of PCD last year, practicing on models. Mine is next Friday. The next two will be on standardized patients. I'm a little nervous for those, but I think it'll be okay; everyone else made it through right? The male ones just have two stations, both of which will be on a standardized patient. Also nervous, but I think it'll be okay. These are of course important because NDs are trained as primary care providers, and we need to be able to assess these important areas if required by our patients.

So that's all for now, I'll make sure to do a full week in the winter so you can learn about what courses we're in then.

Anyway, This weekend is the Ontario Association of Naturopathic Doctor's Annual Convention and Tradeshow. There's lots of interesting talks, and a full tradeshow with all the supplement companies. In first year I worked for a company called Signature Supplements, so I spent the whole time at the booth. This year I will be volunteering on Saturday, so on Sunday I get to go for free. I'm excited to see some cool talks and get a bunch of free supplements, and hopefully network a little bit. My regular posting schedule starts this Sunday, so I'll give you a bit of a recap then. For now it's back to work, so I'll leave you with another funny cartoon (by the way, I won't always do the cartoon thing, if there's something else relevant I may do a different picture, but it's been fun for this week so why not?)