Hearts, Lungs, and Summer

Our Cardiovascular and Respirology course has been proceeding at great speed with massive volumes of information being dumped into our brains. In this course, due to the massive amount of material we have a midterm exam that actually counts. So, next Monday we have an exam for Healthy Populations. HPOP as it is known is generally disliked by the vast majority of students and is probably contains the most skipped lectures in Medical School. The topics covered are basic medical statistics (which have been most unpleasantly reminiscent of my despised days in undergraduate Statistics from 8:30-10:00 Tuesday and Thursday for two semesters with Dr. Wilson Lu - it made a big impression), determinants of health (education, childhood health, gender, biological endowment, etc), and epidemiology. The topics might sound interesting but the lecturers managed to make most of the lectures exceptionally boring. Since the holidays we have been focusing on more at specific populations with various health risks. These have included patient presentations from individuals who are homeless, transgendered, etc. and have been quite interesting. However, the final examination in this course is coming up so this week should contain a significant amount of study...but we will see how it goes.

The following week we have our Course III midterm exam so there is a lot of material to try and synthesize for that as well. We have covered Acute Coronary Syndrome (heart attacks), COPD (what you get if you smoke), asthma, Pulmonary Embolism, Diffuse Interstitial Lung Disease (i.e. pneumonia and a couple other things). So when you take the anatomy, physiology, pathophysiology, pharmacology, clinical presentations, physical exam, radiology, and treatments associated with all those things there is a fair bit to cover. However, we'll get there...it might just require a few late nights - or some serious and dedicated planning and pre-night before the test studying.

The other event of note that has been occurring is preparation for our Summer Electives. This year UofC has changed the schedule a little bit compared to last years. In previous years students had a period of 8 weeks in the summer during which they had to do 6 weeks of clinical elective and then had 2 weeks of holidays. This year the Administration has decided we need a break in March so we will have a 2 week Spring Break at the end of March. Then we will have 6 weeks in the summer during which we have to complete 6 weeks of clinical elective. UofC is a strong supporter of doing International Electives during this period of time so I'm quite excited. I'm in the process of setting an international elective which means I'm going to spend at least six weeks overseas this summer. After some careful consideration of a number of different issues I have decided to try and set up an elective in Ghana. Ghana is a relatively stable country in West Africa. Its biggest advantage is that English is the official language of the country. While tribal languages are spoken many people also speak English which will facilitate my learning experience. So, I'm sort of excited. Things are still quite early in the planning stage but if all goes as planned that is where I'll be this summer for six weeks. This is definitely a topic that will be getting more blog space but thought I'd update you on this bit of excitement.

It is time to go and book a session for our Physical Exam practice exam which is coming up next week. We are becoming more adept at taking blood pressures, examining the abdomen, checking peripheral pulses, and listening to heart sounds. Now the time has come to show an examiner that we are getting better at it.