Let the learning begin

Words of the Day

Melena: black, tarry foul smelling stool containing blood. The blood is a relatively large volume, has been exposed to gastric acid, has been exposed to bacteria, and has been in the GI tract for 8-14 hours.

Borborygmi: the rumbling stomach sounds characteristic of hyperperistalsis

Today was the first day of real med school, and I'm thinking I might be a busy fellow for the next three years. I enjoyed this past weekend having a bit of time to get more settled in my apartment and catch up on a bit of sleep, another aspect of life that is going to be at a premium I believe.

The picture I've added to this post is of the Foothills Hospital complex. There are technically a whole bunch of individual buildings but they are all connected. I will be spending the majority of my time in the building at the tip of the arrow. This is where the Health Sciences Library, Clinical Skills Centre, Small Group Rooms, and Lecture Theatres are located. Incidentally if I could climb up a very high ladder into the sky out of the roof of my apartment this is the view I would se as well.

They broke us in easy this morning at 8:30 with our Introduction to Medical Skills. This is the class where we will learn about communicating with patients, performing a proper physical exam, taking a history, ethics etc. After a brief introduction we finished out the 2 hour block by watching the film Patch Adams. We will be discussing the various attitudes and methodologies the various characters adopt throughout the film but it was a nice way to start. We then had a break until 1pm when things started for real.

We had lectures from 1pm-5:15pm this afternoon so it was a fairly dense information to brain dump. The topics ranged from how we will be assessed for our first course (which runs from now until October 22), a brief overview of the multitude of lab tests that can be ordered by a physician such as a CBC, INR, GTT, GGT, PTT and so forth. It was meant to be a general overview and introduction and it was! We finished the day with a discussion of Upper Gastrointestinal Bleeding, the first of the 120 patient presentations or ways that a patient could present to the physician (if I understand correctly). The lecture was complemented by a youtube video of an endoscopy of a normal upper GI tract. It starts putting this in a useful, real life context...on the very first day of lectures. This was really interesting and I love the way that the instructors draw on all aspects of a problem to present it. We talked about symptoms, taking a history and what to look for in this kind of a presentation, physically examingin for this problem, the most likely causes, way to confirm a diagnosis, classifications, emergency measures, and treatment. It is a very holistic approach that I think is going to be very effective.

Judging from the volume of material covered today I'm going to be busy. In some ways I was able to float through most of my undergraduate degree with periods of intense effort immediately prior to exams and paper due dates. However, that is not likely to be very effective here considering the volume of material and the importance of learning it well...so I guess a readjustment of study habits may be necessary but only time will tell.

I'm off to make some supper; however, if you are interested in what your hopefully healthy esophagus, stomach, and duodenum look like check out this video on youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNXJdlqYqqc