notstudying Posted January 14, 2013 Report Share Posted January 14, 2013 Hi im a second year medical student going into clerkship this upcoming september. I also have a chronic back pain (due to herniated disc from a sports injury) for about 1.5 years. I suffer from back pain and sciatica to my left lower leg when i stand for more than an hour. Did anyone had a similar chronic pain problem that limited your work during clerkship? How did your clerkship go? Also, since I was told that this will likely become a life long chronic pain (accroding to my doc), am I limited from some specialities due to this condition? Thanks ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rmorelan Posted January 14, 2013 Report Share Posted January 14, 2013 Hi im a second year medical student going into clerkship this upcoming september.I also have a chronic back pain (due to herniated disc from a sports injury) for about 1.5 years. I suffer from back pain and sciatica to my left lower leg when i stand for more than an hour. Did anyone had a similar chronic pain problem that limited your work during clerkship? How did your clerkship go? Also, since I was told that this will likely become a life long chronic pain (accroding to my doc), am I limited from some specialities due to this condition? Thanks ! Ouch! Hopefully it isn't as bad as all of that. You can self limit yourself from some fields - if you are in great pain after standing for 1.5 hours would you really want to be the sort of surgeon that has to stand for 8 hours a day? Any recognized medical condition is just worked around by clerkship programs. We had a few people in my program with different but similar issues in clerkship. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
notstudying Posted January 15, 2013 Author Report Share Posted January 15, 2013 thanks rmorelan, I guess i need to identify the problem to my faculty before I start my clerkship then.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ellorie Posted January 15, 2013 Report Share Posted January 15, 2013 You probably want to start talking to them around now - I started talking to mine before we started making plans for clerkship so that the accommodations would be in place before any scheduling was done. You might also want to consider talking to Disability Services at your school if you are not registered with them already. I have a disability advisor through there and sometimes they have experience working with certain conditions and can recommend accommodations that might be helpful/give you ideas about how to work around your issue. Personally I came up with my list of accommodations after speaking to both my disability advisor and my physician and then I brought it to my faculty and they were quite reasonable about it. It wasn't nearly as painful as I was worried it would be. The way I see it, it's far better to be granted accommodations that you don't end up using than to suddenly find yourself in the lurch and not have a plan or a paper trail. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rmorelan Posted January 15, 2013 Report Share Posted January 15, 2013 thanks rmorelan, I guess i need to identify the problem to my faculty before I start my clerkship then.... To your version of student affairs - probably a good idea to do it sooner rather than later. They would need to make plans etc and structure things - basically they won't be able to give you the best possible experience if they have to throw something together and the timelines are often longer than you think to get things done. Even matters like rotation order to line up with the best preceptors etc have to be considered. That means ideally early in second year I would think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
notstudying Posted January 16, 2013 Author Report Share Posted January 16, 2013 Thanks you guys both I will definitely go and talk to some people Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rmorelan Posted January 16, 2013 Report Share Posted January 16, 2013 Thanks you guys both I will definitely go and talk to some people good luck - I am sure they will be able to work something out! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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