OAND Convention, First "Regular" Post, and Running

Here I am, as promised, for my first regular Sunday post. I already summed up last week so there's no need to talk about that, but instead I'll talk about my great weekend at the OAND Convention.

So, I think I mentioned it in a previous post, but the OAND is the Ontario Association of Naturopathic Doctors. This is not to be confused with CONO (College of Naturopaths of Ontario), who are the licensing board for NDs in Ontario. The OAND is the advocate for Naturopathic Doctors in Ontario, helping to advance legislation, provide continuing education opportunities, and lots of other activities. They have an annual convention each year which is a big opportunity to get a lot of great continuing education, and of course meet up with old friends - I'm still at school so this isn't as big, though I did get to see some friends who had graduated, and also Leslie from Signature Supplements, a really fantastic supplement company that does custom compounding for NDs (I worked for her in first year, but I'm a little too involved in academics and other stuff at school now to do that).

Anyway, this year I volunteered at the convention instead of working for a company, so I volunteered all day Saturday, and then got to go as an attendee for free on Sunday (the convention is Friday-Sunday). On my volunteer day I still got to see some talks and walk the tradeshow floor, so overall it was a great time. I saw a bunch of interesting talks, my favourite of which was about Fear and Anxiety in Cancer Patients, this was given by Dr. Jen Green who is actually a FABNO ND from Detroit - FABNO is a Fellow of the American Board of Naturopathic Oncologists; there are only about 100 total right now, and these are really well educated doctors. I really enjoyed learning about some new research in the use of mindfulness to treat anxiety and depression in cancer patients, and also seeing the applicability across other disciplines. The tradeshow was also fun, getting a bunch of free stuff, and also learning about some new products and things that are in the works. Overall it was a pretty cool weekend, and though it would be nice to sit around and relax after a hard week, I think this was a great choice - I'd recommend going for any student, but especially in 3rd and 4th year when you know a lot more and can see yourself using the things you learn much sooner.

On another note, I wanted to mention that I've taken up running, at least a little bit. I've never done that much of this in the past, most of my cardio being HIIT type stuff...or non-existent (I weight train too much!). There's tons of benefits to cardiovascular training and it's an important part of a complete workout program, so I'm pushing myself to really get involved. I did my first 10k on Friday, and today, after the convention, on about 4 hours of sleep by the way (I went out with some friends last night and got home pretty late..), I went out and did a short 5k night run. Not a long one, but decently tough for a beginner runner, plus I'm exhausted from the weekend. It's a nice little break from the world though, and I really love my music so it's a great chance to zone out and enjoy that - though don't zone out too much and get hit by a car!

Alright so that's all for my first Sunday post of the year, I've got a long week ahead of me with a bunch of assignments due, and my gynecology station 1 practical on Friday, and my first physical medicine practical on Friday too. I'll see you next Sunday for an update on the week, if you want to know about anything particular make a comment and I'll see to that. Have a good week!

I swear I don't do all this!
Okay.....maybe just a couple apps

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?)

Thursday, and the most posts in a row ever!

It's Thursday, which means only one thing....tomorrow is Friday! Let's just say it's been a long week, the first full week of the year - well technically last week was, but I was still kind of recovering from unity summit and dragon boating (things I'll hopefully touch on in future posts), so it didn't really count haha. Anyway here are the courses for today

Nutrition 3 - As this is a big class, we've got it twice a week, so just the same stuff, though Dr. Prousky tends to get us working on a case together in little groups for part of class on Thursdays.

Asian Medicine Theory 3 - Taught by Dr. Kassam again, here we're learning the more advanced treatment and theory stuff that we'll later on apply in our practical. For fall, the theory and practical class are side by side, and you have the choice of doing them in either order; but no problem, the stuff we do in practical is based on last weeks lecture, so if you have practical first, you aren't in trouble. Having lecture first is beneficial because we start class at 1, meaning we have a break from 11-1; but having practical first is beneficial becauase you end class at 4 instead of 430.

Asian Medicine Practical - Here we get to actually practice all the stuff in theory class. So far we've just been working on acupuncture, doing some advanced techniques, and then advanced points. Today we did the more advanced points that we didn't do in first and second year, the most infamous of course being Stomach 1, 2 and Urinary Bladder 1. These points are infamous due to the fact that they are right around the eye. It was actually completely fine though, you feel these points less than you feel points in your arm. Once you get over the initial fear, and realize the safety and your control, they are no problem. In the future we're also going to do fun stuff like moxabustion and cupping, and we're also going to start doing cases with each other. These will be great because we'll be able to take everything we've learned and and practice developing appropriate treatment protocols. I'm excited!

After class today, I had my regular clinic appointment at the RSNC. I think I've mentioned it in a previous post, but self care is extremely important, especially in this intense program. The RSNC provides extremely affordable naturopathic care for students (free if you're on the student health plan), and it's a great opportunity to learn about what you will be doing soon from people who were in you shoes just 1-3 years ago. It's also nice to act as a patient so to provide more practice for the interns, and of course it can benefit you immensely, helping work on all sorts of issues. I personally have been doing lots of MSK related stuff in my own visits, but some mental/emotional stuff comes up too, and it's always great to have someone non-judgemental to talk with about anything.

Ok it's 11:15 and I'm going to bed a little bit early today! Here's my funny cartoon for the day, see you tomorrow.

Wednesday, and Some Fantastic News!

Back again for Wednesday's classes. Without further adieu, here they are:

Physical Medicine - This is a pretty cool class, it's taught by Dr. Tebruegge; he teaches functional anatomy in 1st year. As an RMT/ND, he has a lot of experience with more hands on physical medicine stuff, so he's got a great perspective. We learn about stretching (both solo and assisted), strengthening exercises and exercise prescription (my favourite, exercise is the best medicine! except maybe food haha), of course all sorts of useful orthopaedic testing and range of motion stuff, and last but not least, machines! There's lots of really cool machines that can do wonders for muscle pain and strains and all sorts of physical ailments. TENs, ultrasound, laser (which by the way is actually not a word, its an acronym for light amplified stimulated emission radiation, who knew), even UV light. We've got this on Wednesday and Friday mornings, but every few Fridays we'll have a practical to actually practice the tests and movements, so that'll break it up a bit.

Radiology and Advanced Imaging - Not my favourite course, but definitely an important one. This is taught by Dr. Fritz who is a chiropractor, so he has a lot more experience with this stuff. We're going through x-rays and will also look at things like MRI and ultrasound, which are of course important diagnostic tools for many conditions. It's going to be good to have a decent understanding of how these work, even though we'll always get reports from radiologists or other technicians when we get them, so I understand why we have it.

Common Time - Wednesday's common time is a little shorter than Monday, only an hour as opposed to two; by the way if I didn't mention, common time is a period where all four years and the IMGs have no class, so different talks and events can go on during the day that everyone can attend, or people can just hang out together. I had a meeting today for class rep training, it's great that so many people want to get involved in the school (especially the first years, awesome on them!).

Botanical Medicine 3 - This is a full year course in botanical medicine, as we've already got a bunch of basics, we're just diving deeper (class of 2019 reference!) into the medicine, and looking at more conditions and doing more intense cases. It's a bit of a tough class to get through, not my favourite, but there is a lot of awesome stuff you can do with botanical medicine, so it's definitely going to be useful.

Now for the good news.........




I passed NPLEX1!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's been a pretty stressful week since we heard the letters were sent out last week, and since Monday I've been hearing results from friends (some good and some bad). I got home today and my dad was out and hadn't checked the mail yet, so I went to the mailbox, and the second I looked in the box I knew it was there. I walked back home with the letter and the rest of the mail, and didn't even walk in, I went to the backyard to my garden. I knew that I needed to be somewhere calm so that regardless of the news, I could feel kind of okay. I took a seat next to my favourite plant - the cherry tomato plant of course - took a couple deep breaths, and then opened it. I figured the letter would be folded up and I'd have to open it, so I started pulling the piece of paper out...and was greeted by three large Ps! The wave of relief that came over me was fantastic, and I followed with a nice little meditation in front of my garden, thanking myself for the hard work I did in the summer, and so damn glad that I don't have to write the exam again.

Anyway that's all for tonight, maybe I'll go to bed early for once......
Edit - forgot to add a silly cartoon for the day (oh and it's 11:30 and I still haven't started getting ready for bed!)

Tuesday! And I'm back for the second one, telling the truth!

Back again to summarize Tuesday's courses. I actually just finished doing some homework, the first homework I've really done all year! It's only the third week, I'll get in the groove I swear.

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.

3rd Year! And back after a long hiatus...

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.