So the classes for today:
Health Psychology 3 - As our third health psych course, the expectations are getting a little higher, and there is a fair bit more practical work. This year is interesting though, because we actually have 2 SP cases for our group, and every practical, we will continue with those patients. Our first session was today, I fortunately didn't have to go as doctor (I'm a little too nervous to go first!), but it was a great experience to watch my classmates work with the biopsychosocial interview, as opposed to the more clinical focused one we watched yesterday in primary care. It was also interesting to see some of the homeopathy interviewing skills we've learned come into play here. Psych is cool though because you have a little more freedom than homeopathy to probe in different areas, but I find using those homeopathy skills helps really dig deep into what a patient is feeling, and what they actually mean when they speak. I'll also note that CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) is a big focus this year, so we'll be working on that type of therapy with our patients in future sessions. Lucky for me, I got the textbook for free - it was actually a gift from a family friend of mine, cool enough he is a social worker who actually knows the author Judith Beck (her father is kind of the "father" of CBT as it is, and she has played a big role in it's development and popularity. I'm sure he'll be a good resource if and when I get more advanced and want some help getting better at using CBT. Oh ya I forgot to mention the professor - this one is taught by Dr. David Denis again, our professor from 2nd year. He is really great, a true counselling focused ND. He provides such a great presence when doing demos, and when helping as he floats through the different practical rooms. A wonderful resource to have in this course.
After health psych, we have a 3.5 hour break until nutrition. During this time, all the breakout rooms we use for primary care are scheduled out for the 3rd years, so we can use them for whatever we want, with IT and primary care work the main focus, if we want of course. Today however, I had to go to an exam policy meeting - 1 of my duties as one of the VP Academics for the NSA Executive Council. I'll definitely remember to do a post in the future reflecting on my experience on the exec council so far, as it has been pretty great. The meeting was a little boring, but also interesting. You can really see the faculty working hard to develop good policies to benefit the students, and also push them to better academic success. It's also interesting seeing professionals work in discussion group like this, because even though they are older and more experienced, they still have disagreements, multiple conversations and multiple people speaking over one another, all that fun stuff that happens when you do group work in school. A little more professional for sure, but it's interesting.
Nutrition 3 - Our final nutrition course is taught by none other than Dr. Prousky, who is the chief medical officer of the RSNC. It's pretty cool, because he is just a huge wealth of knowledge with many years of experience, and lots of scientific data. He is similar to Dr. Phil (from second year nutrition) in his strive for evidence based treatment, but he is also a little less intense, and worries about using a combination of evidence based medicine and individualized medicine. He is also big on orthomolecular medicine, which generally involved very high doses of vitamins and nutrients for therapeutic benefit. So this year will have a little less focus on diet and lifestyle that Dr. Phil provided (fish oil, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, a handful of nuts, and 30 minutes of walking a day will fix anything!), and instead look at more therapeutic use of nutrients. I think that a combination of these two courses will provide a pretty good foundation for using nutrition to effectively benefit many patients for many different conditions.
That's all for today, back to a little more homework before bed, but I'll be back tomorrow to talk about Wednesday. For now, enjoy this funny CBT cartoon I found.
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