Month: November 2015

Sub-Internship Evaluation: Demonstrating Medical Knowledge

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Throughout my medical school training I’ve worked consistently to build up my knowledge base while also learning how to provide great patient care. My sub-internship rotation in general medicine felt like the culmination of all the learning and training I had done throughout my first three years of medical school. I was able to manage patients efficiently, give detailed clear presentations, answer calls or speak with consultants and even find time to attend lectures and check on patients at the end of the day. This was one of the most challenging rotations I’ve had but also the most rewarding and I felt like a true member of the team. This rotation really solidified my interest in internal medicine.

Overall this rotation fulfilled the objective of medical knowledge by practicing patient care daily with pre-rounds where I assessed the patient, reviewed vitals and results while continuing to think about diagnoses and treatment options. I also learned about the social aspect of medical knowledge that involves factoring in patient sleeping and meal times as well as nursing shifts when determining when to administer medications for patients. Finally, I learned how to juggle multiple patients and problems while staying calm and collected!

I have no doubt this competency will be further developed during my residency. 🙂

Work and Life Balance: Extracurricular Activities

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As a medical student, many days are filled with studying and reviewing disorders and their treatments. However I was fortunate enough to explore my many interests outside of medicine.

1) One of my main passions is music. I’ve been playing flute and piano since I was 6 years old and minored in flute performance at my undergraduate institution. As a natural continuation of this, I joined the OSUMC orchestra as the flautist for 2 years. We played music every Thursday evening ranging from Christmas music to Classical and even movie soundtracks. It was an unforgettable experience where I made lots of friends, relieved some stress and also was able to share my talents with others during our seasonal concerts.

OSUMC orchestra

 

2) I also spent quality time with friends whether at home or at the OSU football games!

OH-IO  Home roommates

 

3) Spending time in nature with hikes to Hocking Hills and other parks helped me appreciate the world we are surrounded in and the wonderful friends who can accompany me during the journey.

hocking hills

 

4) Finally, I also hope to pursue some short missions work during my medical career and got to explore the possibilities when I visited the Global Missions Health Conference in Louisville, KY! I was amazed to see so many medical professionals who were passionate about missions work and this conference gave me many ideas about how I will carry out my medical practice in the future!

GMHC

I chose this collection of photos to demonstrate my strengths and interests that I’ve either discovered or cultivated during my four years in medical school. Through these activities, I also learned how to create an appropriate balance of personal and professional commitments. I will take the next steps to further developing this competency by continuing to pursue my passions outside of medicine during residency and beyond.

Professional Strengths and Weaknesses Reflection

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Strengths-and-Weaknesses-Direction

I believe that my personal strengths are mainly in my enjoyment of listening to others and to be considerate and kind when forming relationships with other people. I also take responsibility for my actions and welcome feedback from others. Being a great listener will help me to be very receptive and empathetic towards patients’ concerns. In this way I could be a better medical student who can learn not only from lectures but also from the real life situations and concerns that patients will express. In addition, my strength in accepting input from others can help me greatly with interpersonal communication because this would be more conducive to successful teamwork in the future.

Besides my strengths, I also have areas that I would like to improve on. I believe my weakness lies in appropriate time management. Oftentimes when I was meeting patients for the first time in clinic, I had a hard time interrupting them and moving on with my questioning. I wanted to make sure the patients were able to express all of their concerns but at the same time I wanted to make sure that my history taking was comprehensive enough that I would not miss the diagnoses and risk giving mediocre health care. This delicate balance I believe is part of the art of medicine and one which I am still honing. I do enjoy listening to patients and really strive to be an advocate for them by hearing their stories and re-expressing their concerns to the rest of the team. However, I must realize that with the limited precious time that medical students and professionals have with our patients, I need to eventually switch from open-ended to more direct questions.

The above reflection was written in the beginning of medical school. Now as a fourth year, I believe my strengths remain the same and luckily I have not become less empathetic towards patients through the course of medical school. I chose this reflection for the competency of “practice-based and lifelong learning” as it discusses my strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore I was able to identify the role of a medical student and highlight the importance of interpersonal communication as a physician.

I will be developing this competency in the future by constantly reflecting on my strengths and weaknesses throughout my medical career.

Community Health Education Surveys

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As mentioned in a prior Community Health Education post. This project really helped me to learn more about breast cancer as well as the education that is necessary for patients and families. I also learned how to work effectively with other medical students as well as nursing staff and did extensive research to develop the following surveys. These were given to the breast cancer education participants before and after the education sessions. They were the essential tools for our group to have quantitative and qualitative results for our project.

Survey A Chemo Preclass Questions UPDATED

Survey B Chemo Postclass Questions UPDATED

I selected these surveys to exemplify the competency of “interpersonal communication” as this artifact reflects the process that was involved when providing these survey to our patient population. Firstly, this information tool was created by using current information technology (PubMed) that found one prior survey from Emory University. We used this current literature as a format and proceeded to collaborate with the Breast Center nurses and staff to formulate our own survey.  Secondly, we communicated continuously with the nursing staff so that these surveys were administered before and after the chemotherapy education classes. Therefore interpersonal communication was essential to the success of these surveys.

I would like to conduct clinical research during my medical career which will further my development in this competency.

Psychiatry Rotation: Reflection on Professionalism

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While participating in my inpatient psych rotation at Harding, I found that all attendings and residents always kept the highest standard of professionalism. When patients were undergoing psychosis, anxiety, and a multitude of different moods and feelings, it can be difficult to understand exactly what the patients are expressing during their encounters. Some patients would mumble, other would stare for several minutes and still others would be pacing and speaking in a flight of ideas. However, the faculty members were always calm and patient while giving respect to the patients who sometimes spoke nonsense during the interviews for rounds. In one particular experience, one of our patients constantly had loose associations and her thought content was very disorganized. However, the attending was always appreciative of the patient for participating in the interview and actively listened to the patient’s incoherent explanations.

This experience taught me that professionalism requires patience and understanding while also being able to quickly analyze and determine the next plan of care for a patient even when a patient is incomprehensible. Though it was difficult to grasp what the patient may be saying, the doctors never appeared flustered or overwhelmed. On the contrary, my attending tried to clarify the information as much as possible and maintained a trusting patient-doctor relationship. This experience impacted my professional development as it taught me that being a professional does not only mean finding the answer to a problem to help care for a patient. Being a professional also means listening to a patient’s needs, respecting the patient and trying your best to treat the whole patient: physically, emotionally, and intellectually.

I felt my reflection in the psychiatry ward demonstrated professionalism. The physician took his role as patient care provider seriously and consistently maintained compassion, respect and altruism in the truest sense.

I plan to develop in the competency of professionalism by emulating this psychiatry physician’s actions when I interact with all of my patients.