The Rise of the Blobfish

Orientation is complete, and the class of 2012 now has a name. I am no longer simply a member of the Class of 2012, I am now a Blobfish. As a Blobfish I’ve joined the Class of 2011 (the Kakapos), the Class of 2010 (the Glabers), and others. This is a Calgary tradition – each incoming medical class gets an animal name and it seems like the weirder the better. For your information, the Blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus) is considered one of the world’s ugliest fish and lives at the bottom of the ocean off Australia and Tasmania, floating just above the ocean floor. It accomplishes this by being composed of a gelatinous substance with a density slightly lower than that of water. Thus they have to expend very little energy to just float along and eat little bits of food that come by. These poor animals are often caught by bottom trawling fishermen and die terribly painful deaths when their gelatinous mass is exposed to the harsh ultraviolet radiation of the surface of the sea!

We’ve now begun another week and I decided I’d better update this blog before life gets too busy. It seems like we tend to have topical weeks. This week is going to be about the liver – liver cancer, liver disease, liver symptoms so I’ll be able to tell you what is happening to your liver by Friday, if all goes as planned.

Last week on the other hand was all about blood and the oesophagus – we had a whole afternoon about three different kinds of anaemia, a whole morning about Thalassemia, and a bunch of lectures about oesophagus cancer and swallowing difficulty. I led my first Case Study group this past week. In our first course we have approximately 22 case studies. In our Small Group of 10, two people are assigned to lead each case study. So, my topic was dysphagia or difficulty swallowing. We worked through the causes and possible diagnoses associated with dysphagia and came up with a differential diagnosis, possible therapies that could be tried, and diagnostic tools that could be used to come up with a definite diagnosis. Each case study has a preceptor who is a physician here in Calgary. Our preceptor for the Dysphagia session was a general pediatric surgeon who was very keen about medical education and has offered us any kind of shadowing experience we would like at the Children’s Hospital so that is a fantastic opportunity I mean to take advantage of.

I am not really aware of the sheer volume of material that we are learning although when I start to think about the volume it is amazing. We have been in class for three weeks and have covered an array of presentations, pathology, anatomy, and therapies already. The overlap and holistic style of instruction is very effective for helping us assimilate this large volume of material but I personally find the small group learning sessions by far the most effective.

Saturday afternoon my Core Group (5 people) met with one of our Physical Exam preceptors. Our preceptor is a resident at the Peter Lougheed Hospital and in these sessions we are to learn how to perform a proper and effective physical exam. We began with an examination of the spleen and the lymph nodes. The preceptor would explain things to us then demonstrate them, then ask us a question about them to make sure we understood. I think it was the most fun I’d had at medical school. We were actually Inspecting, percussing, and palpating a healthy abdomen to see if there was any evidence of splenomegaly. The passion of the preceptor and the stuff we were doing was amazing – it was a great learning experience and I didn’t even mind being in a clinical skills room on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

This morning we are starting with Healthy Populations. While everyone recognizes the importance of epidemiology and population health it is acknowledged as one of the ‘drier’ topics for lecturing and I suspect it will be rather poorly attended as the weeks go by (especially on Monday mornings). However, it is almost time for a break so I’m going to call this all for now. My apologies if this narrative is somewhat disjointed – I’ve written it on two different days and while listening with one ear about community needs assessments so hopefully there are not major mistakes.

Have a great week all.