Week of October 18

It’s been a while since I’ve reflected. The week of October 18^th was rough for me because it was the first week of my pre-clinical site. It was also close to exam time, so I decided not to write that week.

I regret that decision.

I ended up not writing for six weeks in total! I really needed to reflect on how I felt during those weeks as well because too much happened.

Monday

On October 18^th, I had my first pre-clinical site. As a reminder, for my school, I am essentially shadowing and practicing my skills at an actual clinical site. I was super fortunate to be assigned to an endocrinologist who is also a South Asian woman.

For our preclinical sites, we must be there from around 1pm and we are there until 5pm(we are allowed to leave early if our preceptors let us go). For this first Monday, I found myself rushing because I had not printed out some of the materials for this day and I felt very disorganized. I was happy that I found my location the week prior when I picked up my badge because I knew exactly where I was going.

This day was incredible. I learned so much information. It was overwhelming because I knew very little about endocrinology outside of metformin and hypothyroidism. In this day alone, I learned about a few types of diabetes medications, osteopenia, and osteoporosis. I was able to see some physical exam clusters for diabetes. I also observed my preceptor check someone’s thyroid which I learned the week prior!

My preceptor also mentioned pernicious anemia and PCSK9 inhibitors which were going to be on my FOS 2 exam! I was super excited, and we discussed the PCSK9 inhibitors in detail (which definitely helped me remember it for my exam).

However, this session made me realize how different endocrinology was from primary care. Since I am trained in primary care interviews, I left feeling nervous about how I was going to adapt in order to practice my skills.

Below is a picture of me after my first session:

Tuesday

I spent most of this Tuesday trying to get through all my lectures. I believe there was one required event on coagulation. This event was a bit helpful in reviewing the important steps, but I found myself lost for most of it. The rest of this Tuesday was not very eventful because I spent most of the day studying.

Wednesday

This Wednesday was rather interesting. I don’t remember much other than the fact that I went into class because there wasn’t a pre-recorded lecture for vaccines.

However, I have a very strong foundation in vaccines because I did my undergraduate research on vaccines and misconceptions. Because of this, I used some of my own products for my group’s presentation on Measles, Mumps, and Rubella vaccines during our Active Learning Classroom event. One product is linked right here:

For this presentation, I offered to speak for my group which felt like a big mistake at the time. I had chugged my coffee to make sure I finished all my caffeine before 12pm, and then I sat through other presentations after saying I would present.

I think I was a bit nervous because my Apple Watch vibrated to let me know that I had been sitting for 10 minutes and my heart rate hit 120bpm.

Moral of the story, do not chug your caffeine especially when you think you might be nervous about public speaking.

In the evening, I had an opportunity to participate in a Global Public Health event that was hosted by a few local organizations. It was great because I got to see the assistant director of the GPH program from my school for the first time since 2019. She recently moved to another state (right when I returned to the university! ). On the bright side, I was able to see her, and it warmed my heart.

I was also able to speak to some people who helped my think of some potentially interesting events that I could try to set up for the Global Public Health Interest Group.

Thursday

On this Thursday, per usual, there was a Clinical Arts and Sciences session. In this session, I learned the physical exam cluster for HEENT and when a patient comes in with the concern of a cold.

For this session, we had the standardized patients. I was also the first person to go and it was very difficult. Fortunately, my preceptor walks through everything we need to do slowly with the first person, so he showed me how to palpate the head, check the eyes, check the ears, etc.

It was very interesting to have the standardized patient because there were some anatomical anomalies that made it a bit challenging for me. For instance, I had no idea how to find the ear drum with the otoscope because of the angle of his ears. It was so difficult! I eventually learned how far to pull the ear, and how to slowly insert the instrument…but it was scary because I didn’t want to do any harm.

In this session, we also practiced doing rapid Step tests as well as streaking the blood agar plate to culture the bacteria. For this part, we practiced on each other because it would’ve been unfair to the standardized patient to have their tonsils swabbed four times!

Below is a picture showing some of the materials from our Strep tests: 

After this session, there was some time to complete the Histology asynchronous module which had some issues.

 Afterward, I had my research course. This session had a few parts. For the first session, there was an activity that helped us understand how to use

In the second session, there was journal club. For this session, there was an article that was about

When the research course was over, I went home and had some dinner. I was craving ice cream and grabbed some Dairy Queen.

I ended the night with some Anki and went to bed.

Friday

This Friday was the last time I had my preceptor for the weekly case. She would always bake us muffins and bring in fruit for our sessions. She was also super sweet and made sure we knew what information to focus on for studying from our weekly cases.

After the weekly case, I went home and got some work done.