Finals, OSCEs, and Packrats OH MY!

Well I know it has been awhile since I have written to you all and man oh man has life been so hectic...Well let me first start off by saying congrats to the class of 2011 as we are finally to our clinical year. Man we have all been waiting for this and it is finally here HOORAY :-)...Before I get into all that let me recap on a few things. The Fall of 2010 was filled with chaos. Many of my classmates were under the impression that this was the semester that everything slowed down and got easier, but I knew better. It is true that this semester was filled with everything sort of coming together and making sense, however, there was a lot of work to be done. We had clinical medicine 2, clinical therapeutics, Behavioral medicine, OBGYN and Peds, and Humanities. Humanities was one of the fun classes that forced you to remember the humanistic side of medicine. It was also great because of the open discussions that we were able to have about topics that ranged from abortion and illegal immigrants receiving vaccinations to Complementary Alternative medicines and Acupuncture. The semester in general was more time consuming than it was hard. In addition, with coming off the quickest semester of your PA life ( summer semester), its kind of hard getting back to a regular 15 week semester. Regardless of it all, we all got through it and are starting our rotations tomorrow.

Before we had to come back for rotations we had a 3 week christmas break. I had a great time. I went to a Pittsburgh steelers game vs the carolina panthers. After you see my photos it will be clear which team I was rooting for and we did win 27-3...GGGOOOO BLACK AND GOLD NATION. It was quite an experience. I spent the rest of my break visiting family and friends and doing ALOT of traveling. Its just what I needed before starting the rotations.

We all have so many emotions concerning rotations..Are we going to remember how to do an interview? Are we going to do something wrong? Will we know all the answers? Will we like our preceptors? and the answer to all those questions are who knows. We have been taught the skills and they are somewhere deep down in us. Now we just have to apply it. Sounds easy enough right? I sure hope so.

My first rotation is surgery at a Veteran Affairs medical center in West Virginia. I am so excited to do surgery first even though my anxiety is kicking in. The worse part so far about this facility is the paperwork. When you do anything military they want to be sure you are legit and send you through the ringer. I had to get fingerprinted and everything. It was definitely a process that I am happy is over. Its a little intimidating that I will be working with the chief of surgery but that just means I have to do a lot of extra reading and stay current which isn't a bad thing at all.

Well I will have lots of fun stories for you all I am sure of it. So until next time..HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL :-)

Taneisha