Week 2, or, Four Cadavers and a Whiteboard

After an all too short weekend, week 2 hit with the ferocity of Irene here, which is to say moderately windy  accompanied by a tolerably short power outage.  We had a 7 hour day Monday including three of gross anatomy.  Those three hours somehow felt longer than the three that we spent the previous Friday.  Whether because we were all suffering from "the Mondays" or because an hour in, right when we had nearly completed a beautiful dissection of the thoracic (front) limb of our cat, the lab guy came by and commented that our cat looked "a little raw."  Sure enough, he returned with a professor who confirmed that the cat was indeed decomposing and although the limbs looked great, the abdomen was likely to be "soup" when we got there.  So away they took our cat and brought us a fresh, not dissected cat, bringing our total cadaver count so far to four and putting us at least three hour behind.  Silver lining can be found in the fact that we are getting a ton of practice tissue handling and we are now the only group to have both a dog and a cat fixed in the "new method," which is presumably better.  They both look great and after putting in three more hours on our free Tuesday afternoon, we are nearly caught up to where we should be.

It was also this week that I discovered the value of whiteboards and figured out why almost every vet student has one.  On Wednesday, studying with another student, we diagramed physiological chemistry pathways on her whiteboard and just the act of writing these things out helped my understanding immensely.  The next day, we had our first problem based learning (PBL) class.  I foresee enjoying this class very much as it's the one in which we get to play like we're real doctors.  They give us a case, a page of information at a time and we have to diagnose our "patient."  We take notes on a whiteboard in four categories: 1) What we know, 2) what we need to know, 3) hypotheses, and 4) learning objectives (LOs).  I suspect there are few of us who don't feel a little like Dr. House making lists of symptoms and hypotheses, crossing them off as more information comes to light.  It's fun.  After the first day, we all take away learning goals and present them to the class the next day.  For example, this case we're on now involves a young horse that we're "examining" for a potential purchaser who's a little small for his age with pale mucus membranes and a heart murmur.  Not knowing enough to solve the case, the six of us each took one goal to teach the others about next week.  One was heart murmurs in horses, one was nutritional requirements of young horses, etc. etc.  Next week, after we each present our information, we will get another page and make more learning goals until we can make a diagnosis.  We are going to solve four cases over the course of the semester.

On Thursday, in our first "Clinical Skills" class, we spent five hour rotating between the cow barn, where we learned to move cows, to the horse barn, where we learned to halter, lead, and tie horses, to the anatomy lab, where we practiced palpating stuffed animals and biopsying fruit, to the pig farm which was mostly just a tour and discussion of crates and various ways to raise pigs.  It was utterly exhausting, but awesome to spend time outside of the classroom, and also, outside.  It was a nice day, so even though it wiped me out, I very much enjoyed it.  I also ended up signing up to be a teaching assistant for the equine section because they needed volunteers with some horse experience and even though I've been out of the game for a little wile, I feel more comfortable around horses than many of the people in my group, so I volunteered.  Basically this means that I will be teaching a group of students basic horse handling skills along with at least three other TAs under the general supervision of the instructor.  Should be fun.  This week, we had Storm, a mare who was slightly less than thrilled at being paraded around but who was nonetheless reasonably tolerant of us.  I think many of the other mares actually liked the attention, but maybe we caught Storm on an off day.

I have my first exam on Tuesday, Physiological Chemistry.  Although I've been keeping up with the readings and went to a study group today to review the first half of the material, I am very nervous about the exam because it brings up traumatic memories of four hour biochemistry exams that I struggled through only to get back with pathetically low grades.  At least these exams are relatively short.  This one is a one-hour multiple choice test, so there'll be no wondering what exactly I'm expected to write or draw in the blank space.  Given the vibe I get form the professor, the exam will be very challenging, but at least I won't have to sit there wondering what he's asking.  Well, off to study.  Wish me luck and check back next week.