…since I last wrote here?

It honestly hasn’t felt like it. I’ll be honest, it’s not like I completely forgot about the blog. Well, I do sort of forget about it during the week with all the medical school stuff going on (it really feels like a full time job, and that actually sort of doesn’t sit well with me to be honest). I do usually remember it on Fridays, and try to remind myself to write an end of the week reflection at the very least, but then I just make up an excuse or forget. Sometimes I’m just so ridiculously lazy. To make up for that, I hope to write a super long post today and be particularly candid about my thoughts (within reason obviously).

Taking Control of my Education

Anyways, the gist of it is that unless I really want to prioritize my ego, marks don’t really matter (as long as I pass). So I’ve come to the realization that, if my marks don’t matter, why let that control my life (and specifically, my overall education)? I feel like I’d rather expend my energy doing things more productive or fun than studying more than I really need to.

So in terms of my medical education, for me that means spending more time exploring various specialties and trying to get a better grasp on what I’d like to be doing in the long term. While things could of course change, at this point in time, I’m not interested in any of the surgical specialties. I’m just not interested in working with my hands for hours on end, and the lifestyle (i.e. longer hours) just don’t suited the type of life I want. So that leaves medicine (this might be confusing, but apparently, medicine just often means anything non-surgical). Right now internal medicine and neurology are at the top of my interest list, but I’m leaning back towards neurology (after sort of writing it off earlier this semester for reasons I don’t really want to mention now).

I’ve found some neurologists whose work really interests me, so I’m going to try and connect with them in the next week, maybe set up some observerships and possibly get involved in some side research work so I feel like I’m actually being productive. An interest in neurology (and its associated disorders and illnesses) is what got me into medicine in the first place, and if I’m being completely honest, nothing else has excited my yet. I figure this is the right place to start.

Wait, so Am I a Leader or Not?

As part of our U of T Medical School curriculum, we tackle more than areas like anatomy, physiology, histology, embryology, etc. I have already mentioned that we look at Determinants of Community Health and the Arts and Science of Clinical Medicine.

What I haven’t mentioned yet is that we also explore other perhaps less obvious aspects of medicine, and one that we will visit several times a year over the next four years is the theme of management. As part of exploring the concept of physicians as managers, we spent one afternoon a few weeks ago learning about different leadership styles. A particularly interesting concept came up recently that I think would be good to share, especially since I think growing up, students have such a huge misconception about it.

One question that was brought up (and one that I think many individuals think about) goes something like:

We say being leaders is a good thing, but if everyone in a group is a leader, won’t the group be dysfunctional? Don’t we need some people to be followers?

I think the first thing that needs to be addressed is the concept of being a leader. Especially in today’s school and work settings, we are bombarded with the idea that we need to become leaders. Leaders are important of course, and we often praise leaders in the media. However, it’s important to keep in mind that leaders are individuals who lead in a specific setting – that is, leaders exist only in the context of the activity they are leading.

For example, when we say Barack Obama is a leader, what we’re really saying is that he is the “leader” of the United States of America. Put him in another context, say the local pick up basketball team he plays with (I’m just making this up as an example), and he may certainly not be a leader. Of course his leadership skills are always there should he need to rely on them, but it would be wrong to say he is a leader in the absolute sense – because he isn’t.

What we’re really trying to do in today’s world is cultivate leadership skills in young people, so that they may be leaders of tomorrow, but in a variety of contexts and not necessarily in everything that they do. So while you may end up with a group full of individuals with strong leadership skills, not all of them will end up being the identified leader of the group. Most commonly, the individual with the skill set and background most relevant to the group will end up being the leader. For instance, if a group regarding promoting science to young people formed, I am more likely to be the leader, whereas if a golf club was forming, I most definitely would not try to be the leader because I would just be wasting everyone’s time.

Furthermore, it’s important to realize that an important aspect of being a good leader is recognizing strengths/weaknesses of your teammates, as well as knowing when to lead and when to follow. It’s a mistake to think a good leader is always in the leadership role. A good leader recognizes achieving the goals of the group is most important, and that can sometimes be best done when someone else is in charge.

Contrary to intuition, dysfunctionality within a group full of strong minded individuals is actually a sign of poor leadership skills because good leaders would have come to a peaceful consensus on who is most adept to lead the group. Anyways I think that’s sort of a cool concept that we tend to misunderstand, and I hope some people find that helpful, especially if you’re struggling within a group setting.

Real Patient Contact

As I mentioned before, I had been practicing interview sills on standardized patients (i.e. actors). Two weeks ago, I began practicing my interview skills on actual patients. Without a doubt, real patients are more difficult for a variety of reasons (one obvious one being that you can’t “time out” and ask your tutor for advice!). Whereas standardized patients will answer your questions directly, real patients can sometimes be all over the place, and it’s up to you to try and keep the interview focused. That being said, there is something rewarding about working with real patients, I guess for the very reason that it’s actually real.

I also finally got my stethoscope, blood pressure cuffs, and other pieces of equipment. I think we’re going to start learning to use those soon, and I think that starts with real patients this Friday, so that should be cool.

Coming Up…

I have my first Anatomy exam coming up (bellringers…), so I think my writing here will be sporadic again (but hopefully not, we’ll see).

Sorry to everyone who wrote a comment or sent me an email in the past month – I am way behind on those things, I apologize. I will try to get back to everyone soon, but I really don’t know.

Hope everyone is doing well!

I sit and type this on my brother’s 9 inch netbook because my Dell Inspiron 1420 seems to have basically crashed. It started off yesterday when I started seeing flashing zig zag lines and flashing blue and green screens, and it culminated in basically crashing or whatever you call it last night. I basically can’t even get to the log in screen now, it just goes black with zig zag flashing lines.

Fortunately I was able to back up my most important folders on an external hard drive (including my medical school notes, I would be very sad if I lost those!). It’s just frustrating because my last Dell laptop’s screen busted, and now this one just busts after maybe 1.5 years of use. I guess I’m not buying a Dell ever again.

A Light Week at Medical School

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Courses

I realized I probably never actually explained how medical school, at least here at the University of Toronto, works in terms of courses/curriculum. For this first year, we are doing three courses at a time, with two of those courses running throughout the year while the third will change a few times during the year.

The two courses that remain the same are ASCM and DOCH. The Arts and Science of Clinical Medicine (ASCM) course (which runs half day a week) is where we work in groups of 5 or 6 students in a hospital setting, led by a tutor (who is a physician), to learn actual clinical skills like taking a medical history, doing a physical examination, etc. The Determinants of Community Health (DOCH) course also runs half day a week, with the goal of teaching students to “be aware of the social, physical and emotional needs of individual patients and communities as a whole”.

Finally there is the variable third course which takes up most of the week. Right now we are doing the Structure and Function component, which covers “Gross Anatomy, Embryology, Radiologic Anatomy, Histology, Cell Biology, Cardio-Respiratory Physiology, Haematology, and an introduction to Pharmacology”. But by the end of first year we will also have covered Metabolism and Nutrition, as well as Brain and Behaviour.

First Interview Attempt

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I woke up at 7:50am on this beautiful Saturday morning after sleeping at 2am. I was exhausted from the entire first week of medical school, and I was looking forward to finally sleeping in. Of course, my biological clock is apparently broken now, and I woke up around the same time I normally would to get to class. Damn. I actually turned on my laptop to write a blog entry complaining about this, but then the internet wasn’t working, and I realized I should probably at least try to “sleep in” or else I’d be grumpy the rest of the day.

So what to say about the first week of medical school. I think I said this last time, but the days are long. I’m not used to being in school for 9am to 5pm with only a one hour break. But more than that, it’s the fact that I’ve been in lecture most of the time that’s getting to me. I’m going to be frank and say that I don’t think I’m a school person. I think I used to be when I was younger, but something changed, and now I find it hard to sit still in class. It’s one thing if I was extremely fascinated with what we were being taught (for instance, I guess I could watch TED lectures for seven hours a day if I have to), but I’m going to be honest and say that I’m not interested in, for example, human anatomy. I guess that’s okay though – I mean, even one of our professors came in and said he hated anatomy when he took it here.

But it didn’t make me feel better during our anatomy labs, where we are dissecting cadavers. Some of my peers are more into it, excited about learning some of the different veins or arteries, and walking around to check out the other cadavers. Me, I’m not as excited – I’m just not all that passionate about the human body. I’m just trying to get through the lab if I’m being completely honest.

And so for a short while, I started to feel a bit bad and it made me start to question why I’m even here in medical school. I am clearly not at all interested in the basic sciences they are teaching me so far, and some of my peers clearly have an enthusiasm for the human body that I do not.

But the more I started thinking about it, the more I realized it was okay. I remember that I didn’t come to medical school to learn histology or anatomy. While I knew I would have to do those things in my journey to be a physician, that’s not what I was looking forward to. Maybe I’m looking too forward, but I’m excited about being a physician some day. That’s what excites me more than anything else in this whole process.

I mean, we all have different reasons for wanting to be a physician, and along with those, we will have different interests. I want to be a physician for the intellectual challenge, for the dynamic team environments, and for the privilege to impact people’s lives in a positive way, among other things – but needless to say, a genuine interest in the human body is not at the top of the list.

What does this mean? Honestly I don’t think it means anything, and I don’t think it should. Do I think I will be a good doctor? I believe I will, or else I wouldn’t be in medical school right now. I wouldn’t be here right now if I didn’t genuinely think I would be happy being a physician and that I would be good at it.

I think sometimes we forget that there isn’t just one way to look at something or go about doing something. We get too caught up in trying to figure out the right or wrong way to frame something that we ignore the reality that sometimes there is no right and wrong and there is just different.

So I don’t like sitting through lecture learning human anatomy and I don’t get excited about identifying the location of the lateral thoracic artery – that’s okay. I still believe I will make a darn good doctor and a few months of anatomy isn’t going to discourage me from trying to live up to those expectations.

So yesterday I am wearing the T-shirt I got in my orientation week package. I am showing my dad the front, which says “Canada’s Next Top MD”.

My dad responds by unbuttoning the front of his shirt and revealing the T-shirt he has underneath: “So You Think You Can MedSchool”.

Oh, and then he says “Pwned”.

(For those of you who don’t watch much TV, those phrases are parodies of the reality TV shows Canada’s Next Top Model and So You Think You Can Dance)

Anyways, I figured I’d share that tidbit with you, both because I thought it was pretty funny, but also because I feel guilty for not providing the Orientation week reflection I had promised. Orientation week was much more tiring than I thought it would be. I had intended on doing a detailed write up after each day, but I gave up on that idea after realizing how exhausting each day was and how little energy I would have to write up anything decent.

I am writing this as I sit in my new bedroom in downtown Toronto at a place I will be sharing with my brother for the foreseeable future. Although the beginning of university or college is often the big transition for many young people, I feel as if this was the real transition I was waiting for. Although I had lived on residence for a few years at York University, having a new “permanent” home is a completely different feeling.

It also has to do with the transition to medical school. The big difference between medical school and my undergraduate program is that medical school is very focused, and in a way, more obviously relevant – I am learning and training for a specific profession. It’s quite different from studying undergraduate biology where that could lead to numerous different destinations. Whereas I could choose my courses in undergrad, I will be learning the exact same thing as all of my peers over the next few years. In a way, all of this might be a good thing – by having to learn things that I know are directly relevant to what I will be doing long term, I will probably be motivated to take my studies more seriously.

There are ~225 students in my class. That’s a big number, when you realize most other medical schools in Canada tend to have a number in the 100’s. I actually think there is a good chance you could go the entire four years of medical school here without having met every single person at least once – it also doesn’t help that the class will have varying schedules once clerkship starts in 3rd year.

Going to medical school in a way seems like a step backwards, at least school-wise, because it’s like high school all over again. You are part of a small community, and you are all in the same class together (unlike undergrad where you and your friends could easily have very different schedules). While this is good because you can form closer, stronger, relationships right away, it can feel weird sitting in one single lecture hall for eight hours in a day (that’s exactly what I will be doing tomorrow!).

I have only been in class for one day so far, but all I can is that it is long. You don’t get breaks anymore. Most days I am going for 9am to 5pm with a one hour lunch break. Occasionally I will get a Friday afternoon off here and there, but for the most part, the program here at UofT is pretty packed.

Anyways, since I didn’t give a report on orientation week, I feel I at least owe a detailed report of my first day of medical school. I’ll do my best to keep it interesting, but no guarantees – sometimes it’s hard to make class interesting 🙂

UofT Medical School – Day 1

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Wow what a tease that title is.

Came home super tired, and unable to type. Will probably end up doing some really long write up at the end of the week, unless I find some odd time during the week when I’m not completely exhausted.