Medical Knowledge and Skills

The medical school class was given a VARK questionaire in the beginning. The VARK questionnaire suggests that I am a multimodal learner with scores of ten on everything except for audio. I have a large tendency towards the visual compared to audio. This seems very in line with my learning preferences because I liked reading the information from the slides much more than listening to lectures. I used my ability during an Emergency Medicine Rotation fourth year and got a grade of letters and a letter of recommendation. I took the feedback from the VARK and various other rotations that suggested I loved interacting with patient and staff and learning whenever possible.

Eval: “Mengzhi performed at an above expected level clinically for a senior medical student while at Memorial Hospital in Marysville, OH. Mengzhi displayed a good knowledge base and he was consistently able to generate complete and appropriate differential diagnoses and treatment plans. Mengzhi was able to gather relevant information in a timely fashion and then effectively communicate that information to the attending staff in a clear and concise manner. He managed his patients well with minimal faculty guidance. Mengzhi demonstrated appropriate clinical decision-making skills and he demonstrated very good basic procedural skills. He was very enthusiastic and eager to learn and apply new information. Attendings noted that Mengzhi was an interactive learner. He sought out opportunities to become involved in patient care and how he could help the team. He provided good presentations and was able to formulate reasonable differential diagnoses. Mengzhi was evaluated through direct observation while performing a medical history. He acted in a professional manner during the month and was well-liked by both patients and staff.”

The thing that impressed the attending the most was that I had a continuous drive to learn on my own that I was constantly reviewing the literature in between patients. This is how I learn due to repetition. The IPAD and my phone were invaluable resources because I was able to create study charts for the algorithums that ED physicians used. I think this one of the parts that impressed the attending the most was that I questioned why some of the algorithms were used this way and the cost-effectiveness of them. For example in the case of an Emergency situation with DVT/PE what was the likelihood they actually have the DVT and if we ruled out with Clinical Gestault and negative D-dimer and there being a 1-2% chance they have a PE but likely not clinical significant at this exact moment could that change the calculus in discharging the patient. There’s just so much information that is still unknown and it’s so interesting to me to try to find them as I tried on my laptop. The attendings also told the risk of treating someone with thrombolytics could be dangerous if the benefits are unlikely.. The baseline medical knowledge creates a situation that reinforces further research into what is the underlying evidence behind each of these decisions we make as physicians and are of utmost importance to continuing update that information on UpToDate.

In my experience, teaching hospitals like OSU have some of the best care because in each service there is an immense diversity in thought and knowledge levels that help maintain the greatest standards that comes with a combination of medical students, residents, nurses, pharmacists, attending physicians, and other staff all banding together for the patient. I found it really rewarding that I as a first year learned so much clinical information and then later in third and fourth year found that information useful and then consequently taught the first years. In addition, oftentimes I’ve had to give short lectures on a certain disease to residents, fellows, attendings, and other medical students that helped me to truly understand a disease and still retain it to this day.  For example. In William’s syndrome you should not give anesthesia because there is a risk of sudden cardiac death as well as superaortic stenosis, two bits of information that I will remember for a long time because I had to go find the information, understand the information and then present it to everyone else. I also presented on preeclampsia in pregnancy and remember the topic very well to this day. I think this plays well in the lifelong learning because medical knowledge for me means to it is meant to be built and continually reinforced throughout a lifetime.