Exam Season

Final exams have begun once again at CCNM. The school is filled with students struggling to remember that last detail about that one thing they missed in class, and it's definitely much quieter.
My first exam was this morning, and yes, it was the OSCEs. It was a bit of a nerve racking experience, but it definitely went well. My exam was at 8:56 (on the dot, everything has to be very structured and specific!), so we had to meet as a group on the second floor 20 minutes early. Dr. Roberts explained the process to us one more time, and then filed down to the clinic one by one, with our lab coats, medical equipment, and our clipboards. Dr. Pachkovskaja met us in the clinic and provided us with a last minute pump-up speech, telling us all to smile and be excited. Then we were sent off to our rooms, of course mine had to be around the corner and waste a bit of my prep time. We were then given 90s to read our case stem and write down any notes on our clipboard. Our patient had an earache, which is an interesting complaint because it kind of jumps all over with the types of exams you need to do, but it's definitely a little less intensive than something like cough or hypertension. I walked in the room and my evaluator was actually my resident from clinic 2, Dr. Irons, and the standardized patient was a fourth year I knew from unity summit. Needless to say this didn't really calm my nerves at all. I thankfully remembered to wash my hands right away and introduce myself to the patient, getting consent, and then got started on my exams. For some reason I started taking pulse without giving him the thermometer first, but I recovered and got vitals done pretty quickly. After that I kind of jumped all over the place, not really following my previously set up script, I think in the moment of anxiety I was forgetting some things and just went with what I remembered and what I had written down. I did pretty well I think, getting through all the exams, except for some silly reason I forgot to check his sinuses (I checked his nose why wouldn't I do sinuses!). The bell rang at 20 minutes and I was given the post-encounter probe (like a little quiz), it was pretty easy just 3 questions, and then the next bell rang and it was over. I got out of the room and found my classmates all happy and smiling, the anxiety drained from our bodies and left in the exam rooms.

OSCE 1, you were quite the challenge, especially to prepare for, but we took you down. Now, on to the next 7 exams I have! (oh clinical medicine and microbiology, I can't wait until you're over on Thursday).


As a quick side note, I wanted to just comment on the 4th year holiday play that I had the pleasure of seeing on Thursday night. Their theme was Frozen at CCNM, and it was just fantastic. They did a musical adventure with lots of inside jokes about CCNM, and lots of really great Disney songs adapted to fit the play. The words were changed to include CCNM jokes, but they played a lot of my favourites, like "A Whole New World," "Hakuna Matata," and "Be a Man." Of course they also did "Let it Go," a bit of an overrated song but it was still really great. The whole experience got me really excited about my own 4th year holiday play, something that I definitely want to be involved in. After exams are over I think I'm going to start seeing who will be interested in being a part of it; of course it's 2 years away, but this one was really fantastic so I think the earlier we start the better we can be. I just love musicals!

Some of the stars of the play. They really did a great job setting an atmosphere
considering it was all done in the Lecture Theatre at CCNM

Cool Marine Video, and HEROs Class 2

    Today in homeopathy, one of the remedies we learned about was sepia officinalis (sep), aka cuttlefish ink. I won't go on about the details of this remedy, but Dr. Byden-Tailor showed us a really cool video of a cuttlefish before we started learning about the remedy, I really recommend watching it here just for the wow factor (I know its over 4 minutes, watch if you're interested, but if you're time is limited the first 20 seconds are all you need for the really cool part).

   I also had my second HEROs class today, which was the second part of Starting Smart/Leadership. Today was once again a little bit scary and overwhelming, but at the same time made me feel good about my choice to take this course early. My future in the business world is a bit of a scary thought, but it is an important reality and I know that if I procrastinate and wait too long, I'm only going to deny my own success, and with that, deny my ability to help people improve their health.

   So the focus of this class was really on where you can go as an ND. It seems that employment is not a big area for NDs --> it's possible to work for a supplement company, to teach or work for a government agency or other NPO (non-profit organization), but these opportunities are limited. There are also some residencies available, but these are limited, and also not long term. So the main opportunities really involve working for yourself. But, there are some possibilities that don't have to be you opening an office for yourself. We talked about partnerships, sole proprietorship, being an associate, and the management model (or zero partnership entity). What I learned is that partnerships are definitely a bad thing unless it is with a significant other (they seem nice, "us against the world," but once the talk becomes about money, there are problems, especially if one of the partners has a divorce with their spouse), and that sole proprietorship is the way to go if you have the resources to do it successfully (with the ultimate goal of hiring associates and building a successful "Clinic," rather than "Practice").

    However, if resources are tough then being an associate or the management model can be an effective way to start. We talked a lot about the details of contracts and the economics of things, and it's sad to hear that the situation around contracts within the naturopathic professional community is very bad. It really is just that a lot of naturopathic doctors do not know enough about business, and so a lot of bad contracts are written that lead to poor, win-lose situations. My hope is that with the knowledge from this course and Andre's help (fortunately with taking HEROs, my first contract review from him in the future is free), I can avoid these situations and get myself into a win-win situation first thing.

    That's all for now, off to bed and then tomorrow is Halloween (well October 30, but we have common time so there will be some fun events). I'm going for the costume contest as a pretty silly costume, but it should be fun!

This isn't me, but it is the costume I plan on wearing tomorrow. Go big or go home!

Medical Equipment!

   So after our final biochem midterm yesterday (woo finally done!), our Clinic rep Alex had an awesome medical equipment demo for us at his apartment. He's been doing a really great job of setting everything up for us and trying to get us the best equipment and best deals --> I'm very impressed and glad I voted for him. So Ken from Steven's Medical Group (a great company, my Garan said he actually used to deal with them for medical equipment for his office) brought in all the Heine equipment including sphygmomanometers (blood pressure gauges and cuffs), diagnostic sets (eye and ear scopes), and stethoscope. He also brought in Littman stethoscopes and Welch Allyn sphygmomanometers, though he actually had to do it in a separate room (another rep he works with was there who exclusively shows Heine equipment, so he had to do that because of conflict of interest or something).

   I tried out everything, it was pretty cool checking out the eye and ear scopes and actually seeing everything. I was also really happy with the Littman stethoscopes --> I've tried a stethoscope before in my physiology class at Laurier, but the quality was really poor and I could barely hear anything, so it was good that the one I'm going to buy had great sound quality.

   So in the end I ended up buying the Heine diagnostic set and sphygmomanometer, the Littman Cardiology 3M stethoscope (great sound quality, bell and diaphragm for high and low frequency sounds as well as easier to use for pediatric patients), and all the extra stuff we need (reflex hammer, tuning fork, eye chart, pen light and thermometer). We only need the sphyg and stethoscope for this year, but I got a great deal buying everything at once. The original deal was if you got a Heine sphyg and diagnostic set, you'd get a free stethoscope --> I really didn't like their stethoscope and couldn't hear much, so Ken was really nice and gave me a $147 credit rather than getting the stethoscope, so it was definitely worth it in the end (though everything together cost me over $1300! Hopefully I'll use it for the rest of my life though, so then I guess it's worth getting the best stuff).

   I'm pretty excited to have my own professional equipment (which I'm sure I'll bother my family and friends with a lot when I want to practice using them). When I get them in a couple of weeks I'll definitely post some pictures of them, but for now here's a picture of the stethoscope I got:

Here's the funniest one you can get --> pink tubing with a rainbow chestpiece! I obviously didn't get this one because it may make patients find me, just a wee bit unprofessional (I think this is more for pediatric doctors). Pretty funny though!