Primary Care - Doctor Week!

As usual, it's late on Sunday night and I really should go to bed, but I said I'd do these posts, so here I am. I was actually going to write this earlier, but I decided after 3 years, I'd finally give Game of Thrones another try. I tried watching it years ago and just couldn't get into it, but everyone is always talking about how good it is, plus it's almost December, so you know, "winter is coming." I know I technically saw it in the past, but watching the first episode just now, it was actually really good. I'm excited.

So anyway, a couple cool things this week. First off, I was finally the doctor in Primary Care. I think I explained in the past, but in Primary Care the class is set up as a practical with groups of 8. Every week someone acts as the doctor, we have a standardized patient come in, and for 45 minutes the doctor does an initial intake with questions and physical exams. The kicker is that as we are still learning, your group is available to help guide your thinking if you get lost, or are making a mistake on a physical exam, or miss an important question. This week was case 7, so we've been doing this for a while, but I was only just the doctor this week. It was a very humbling experience. When you're watching the case and doing research in your notes and online, you're disconnected enough that you can really think about stuff. As the doctor, I felt so connected and in the zone with the patient, I almost lost focus sometimes, and of course missed a couple really important questions. Thanks to my group though, I got on track, and I think I did well enough, getting a good amount of information to work with. It was definitely a cool experience, and I'm excited to do it again next semester, of course also doing more of this stuff with real people in my clinic shift. Also side note, I'm also going to be the doctor in Health Psych this week, so that should be interesting too. It's still a 45 minute visit, but a bit of a different focus. I'll talk about that next week.

So another cool thing this week was that it was Men's Health Week. We started off the week on Monday with Suit and Sunglasses day. It was a lot of fun, I usually come to school in joggers or sweatpants, so it felt pretty cool to come all dressed up. At common time we ran a Men's Auction, and raised a lot of money for our charity. I auctioned off some personal training services, so I was glad to be involved. Our charity by the way is Eva's Initiatives for Homeless Youth, a great cause for homeless youth in Toronto that really need help. You can check them out at here.

There was also a really great talk I went to on Wednesday, by Dr. Yashar Khosroshai, ND. He's one of the TAs for health psych at CCNM, and in addition to his practice, runs a company called MindShift Ninja. He has some pretty cool outlooks and perspectives to talk about. His talk this week was very intersting, called "Don't Be A Man, Be A Leader." I thought this was fantastic, because in our society today, there is too much focus on men being this stereotypical character, who is strong, closed off, and doesn't need anyone's help. I have lots of notes on this topic that I'm happy to share if you're interested. He also referred to a cool TED talk I finally watched today by Brene Brown on vulnerability, and how important it is to be vulnerable in order to succeed. To be a leader, to be connected to others, it all comes down to being self-aware, and being strong enough to be vulnerable, to be open and to be able to put your ego aside, asking for help when you need it.

I could talk about this stuff for hours, but I really should get going to bed, it's another long day tomorrow. Fun things for this week? Tomorrow we've got dance practice for Medgames, something I'm really excited about, and hopefully I'll have a video to link for you in January after it happens. I'm also going out to Costco to buy food for the MOSCE, an event I attended last year, but this year as one of the VP Academics for the NSA, I'm actually running! So that's on Tuesday, and I'm hoping it'll be a great event to help support the second years and prepare them for their OSCEs. On Friday I'll be shadowing the Fibromyalgia/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis shift, which should be pretty interesting. Speaking of that, my application was accepted and I got an interview! My interview is next Friday (December 11), so I'm hoping that will go well - we're a few weeks off, but I think I'll know if I get on the shift around the end of December.

Alright, long enough post, and it's almost 1! I'll leave you with a picture of my Mo progress for Movember. I don't do the 'stache only thing because it looks pretty bad on me, but it's been a fun month anyway.

I think I took the original picture really late on November 1st, that's probably why I look so out of it.
Or maybe I planned on making the Mo picture look a lot happier, strategy!