Real Beef Posted October 10, 2013 Report Share Posted October 10, 2013 Thought I would put down a few random thoughts for people's consumption. Funny enough it has taken me being a 2nd year medical student to feel like a medical student. Most of 1st year you cant believe you are IN medical school and feel like a fraud for the first while if you havent been groomed all your life to be in medicine or dont come from a family with family members who are physicians. So it is a bit surreal I think. The first year is a long welcoming ceremony into the profession and getting used to the new role. This is of course not everyone's experience but was mine ... I didnt feel like a med student for the first year. Now into second year I know I am a medical student ... I have proven myself worthy of being in the role, have succeed in first year and have the skills to succeed this year and beyond with confidence. I guess it is all to say that you need to gain confidence in yourself in the first year because of the mythos of med school which is intimidating to most outside observers. So having just completed Module 107 which is the awkward reproductive module I can say it is not as bad as you imagine. Sure you do a breast exam, female pelvic exam, male genital exam and rectal exam but by second year you have mostly internalized the medical student role and no longer are a lay person but are able to turn on the professional role and do what you have to do. Though before and after informal debriefing chats with friends and classmates are pretty funny. So now we started our Module 108 which is renal with our first clinical placement started next week! In first year you have a placement at the end of the year however it is purely a cultural placement though some clinical stuff might be peppered in there. However this 108 placement will be the real deal and many of us are looking forward to the exposure and with my interest in emergency medicine it will be awesome to be able to do extra shifts in a rural emerg dept. One funny phenomenon at NOSM I have observed as when you are applying to NOSM you understand that you will be sent on placements and you beg to get in and think "You can send me ANYWHERE I just want to be in ... send me to the Arctic for a year placement I dont care Ill do it ... anything to get in". But once you are in you become picky and choosy. You pick you top 3 locations for the lottery system and when you dont get any of them you get pissed, mad, sad, ruins your day, you complain to everyone, try to trade. We get the entitled feeling and no longer think we would be fine being sent anywhere now that we are in ... we are now "privileged" medical students and should get one of our top choices, preferably our first choice:) I didnt get any of my choices and went through the stages of grieving and finally accepted it and am now looking forward to the adventure. Another random thought 2nd year at NOSM so far seems more manageable than first year ... is the material easier? I dont think so, just that you have developed the confidence, the study skills, your ability to manage large volumes of material and understand how to navigate a small group session more effectively than first year. That is all. Beef Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rural_roots Posted October 10, 2013 Report Share Posted October 10, 2013 Thought I would put down a few random thoughts for people's consumption. Funny enough it has taken me being a 2nd year medical student to feel like a medical student. Most of 1st year you cant believe you are IN medical school and feel like a fraud for the first while if you havent been groomed all your life to be in medicine or dont come from a family with family members who are physicians. So it is a bit surreal I think. The first year is a long welcoming ceremony into the profession and getting used to the new role. This is of course not everyone's experience but was mine ... I didnt feel like a med student for the first year. Now into second year I know I am a medical student ... I have proven myself worthy of being in the role, have succeed in first year and have the skills to succeed this year and beyond with confidence. I guess it is all to say that you need to gain confidence in yourself in the first year because of the mythos of med school which is intimidating to most outside observers. So having just completed Module 107 which is the awkward reproductive module I can say it is not as bad as you imagine. Sure you do a breast exam, female pelvic exam, male genital exam and rectal exam but by second year you have mostly internalized the medical student role and no longer are a lay person but are able to turn on the professional role and do what you have to do. Though before and after informal debriefing chats with friends and classmates are pretty funny. So now we started our Module 108 which is renal with our first clinical placement started next week! In first year you have a placement at the end of the year however it is purely a cultural placement though some clinical stuff might be peppered in there. However this 108 placement will be the real deal and many of us are looking forward to the exposure and with my interest in emergency medicine it will be awesome to be able to do extra shifts in a rural emerg dept. One funny phenomenon at NOSM I have observed as when you are applying to NOSM you understand that you will be sent on placements and you beg to get in and think "You can send me ANYWHERE I just want to be in ... send me to the Arctic for a year placement I dont care Ill do it ... anything to get in". But once you are in you become picky and choosy. You pick you top 3 locations for the lottery system and when you dont get any of them you get pissed, mad, sad, ruins your day, you complain to everyone, try to trade. We get the entitled feeling and no longer think we would be fine being sent anywhere now that we are in ... we are now "privileged" medical students and should get one of our top choices, preferably our first choice:) I didnt get any of my choices and went through the stages of grieving and finally accepted it and am now looking forward to the adventure. Another random thought 2nd year at NOSM so far seems more manageable than first year ... is the material easier? I dont think so, just that you have developed the confidence, the study skills, your ability to manage large volumes of material and understand how to navigate a small group session more effectively than first year. That is all. Beef Beef! I lapped this up with enthusiasm. Thanks for taking the time to provide this window and keeping it "real". I feel like these updates reinforce your gratitude for your seat at NOSM. Good stuff dude. RR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hockeynut Posted October 11, 2013 Report Share Posted October 11, 2013 Nice post! I do find the ' I'll go anywhere as long as I get in" to 'I only wan tot be in the city" mentality funny. With the report coming out yesterday about the unemployment rate of specialists in Canada being such a stark difference when compared to northern Ontario. Anyways Hopefully I'll be at NOSM next year (Top choice of all 9 schools I've applied to) I'll be gunning for a placement somewhere in north Eastern Ontario. (By north I anywhere north of the Tri-towns I'd be happy with) Anyways thanks again Beef and keep us posted on the NOSM front! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MDwannabe02 Posted October 11, 2013 Report Share Posted October 11, 2013 Thanks for the update, Beef. I've heard such positive feedback from all the NOSM students I've talked to about the ICE and second year placements that I really feel like they must all be awesome. Having grown up in Northwestern Ontario, I really can't see a bad place to be put though. Is this not the cast for the east placements? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Real Beef Posted October 11, 2013 Author Report Share Posted October 11, 2013 Just to be clear all the 2nd year ICE placements are in Northwestern or Northereastern Ontario and students from either campus can go anywhere within Northern Ontario. Most of the complainers are the old calcified students like me who want to be near our pre-med school place of residence or near family (for students who are mothers/fathers). Though there are plenty of younger students who want to be near their boyfriend and girlfriend and are not happy with being 17 hours drive away for a month. This is the type of thing that happens once you get in. It's not that any of the placements are bad ... I have only heard of good things from all the clinical placements. Usually if there is any hiccups its usually because of a site being new and not being organized for students, not anything to do with clinical experiences. But again I think everyone eventually accepts the fate and then becomes positive about the upcoming experience. I would say the majority of medical students are a positive/optimistic bunch so we turn what me may view as not ideal into a positive learning opportunity. The major centers in the North are not included in the initial ICE placements (i.e. Sudbury & Thunder Bay) though interestingly North Bay(?) and Sault Ste Marie are so there are some larger centers (or at least in the North they are considered larger). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hockeynut Posted October 11, 2013 Report Share Posted October 11, 2013 The major centers in the North are not included in the initial ICE placements (i.e. Sudbury & Thunder Bay) though interestingly North Bay(?) and Sault Ste Marie are so there are some larger centers (or at least in the North they are considered larger). the idea of doing a placement or placements in my home town, where I would intend to practice if I were to get in, is just so awesome after spending my undergrad years 12+ hours from home. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Real Beef Posted November 1, 2013 Author Report Share Posted November 1, 2013 Quick update: I am on my Module 108 ICE placement. Those who will get into NOSM will learn the acronyms in due time - this is our first away clinical placement which also happens to be our renal module. I am in a small NE Ontario community and had an excellent day in the emergency department today. We had a successful resuscitation today which was an excellent learning opportunity for new learners. Being only one of two medical learners we were able to participate in the code as best as we could, in bagging the guy, taking vitals, charting appropriately (BP, HR recording every three minutes). Pretty amazing when the MD is talking out loud and slowing down the intubation just a tad so he can teach you something ... wow. You feel pretty lucky to have that sort of attention. I also got to do a suspicious lesion exicision effectively being only supervised ... drew up, injected the lidocane+epi agent, MD did the first cut I did the rest of the excision and then sutured the lady all up myself after having done my first suture yesterday and being pretty inept at it ... but today it was MUCH MUCH better and faster and more natural. Not that hard by the way. Although it is natural for new learners to want to start in the big tertiary centers for learning purposes ... because you want to see MORE ... I can reassure you that as a new learner small communities are the way to go for learning for many reasons; one can anticipate the reason of small teacher:student ratio and the lack of a thick hierarchy of fellows, residents and students to improve the opportunities your way but consider also that as a new learner you need to concentrate on the easy, low hanging fruit like the clinical approach to headaches, ear aches, cuts, excisions, fractures, MSK issues, SOB etc, etc. While the complex, trauma stuff may be exciting you are too far from being useful and able to learn from that due to the lack of fundamental theory/basic clinical experience at that point. Dont get me wrong you still see neater stuff like a pneumothorax requring a chest tube and the occassional code and trauma but because you are not horribly useful in those situations and a bit overwhelmed that all you can do is sit back and do low level stuff anyway that you arent much closer to running a code. But being independent in heading into do an exam on a patient who is stable but short of breath is a reasonable exercise for a new learner that you can do from start to near finish. You are involved a ton and gain a lot of experience and confidence. I think the approach is reasonable and a good way to introduce early learners to increasing levels of complexity in a graded manner. So we have one more week left, a second clinical placement in new year followed by a required elective in the summer which I will beig doing in emergency medicine in a larger community than I am currently in. Hopefully by fourth year I will be very comfortable with the more routine, common presenting concerns to the ED setting and can concentrate/shine on the more complex conditions on my EM rotations as that is my ultimate career interest. Anyhow thats a few updates and thoughts for your consumption. Beef Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hockeynut Posted November 1, 2013 Report Share Posted November 1, 2013 Again thanks for the update Beef! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Real Beef Posted April 26, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 26, 2014 Not much happening here on this NOSM sub-forum so I thought I would 'blog' my final thoughts of second year. Overall I enjoyed second year more than first. As in an earlier post you catch your stride and come in with more confidence in 2nd year. Further you have two 1 month clinical community placements where you begin to develop some real clinical experience on a continual basis. So this is certainly affirming. What was a bit of a downer is the examination schedule in 2nd year where you have a major exam shortly after returning from Christmas holidays which is really hard as it is really your only time off with family for many people who are from away but you arent able to totally relax. Those who did relax a bit too much over the holidays suffered academically on the exam and than were mroe stressed for this last set of exams. Speaking of which we had a major double module exam (written & lab) and final OSCE (clinical skills exam) covering two years of clinical skills material the same week. We were all exhausted from the all the long weeks of studying coming up to this point ... my cranial skull sutures were tearing at the seams with all the info I had to stuff into my brain. So second year is by far better but the examination schedule is not optimal for students, though doable with a few layers of stress amd buckets of Red Bull. As a cautionary note though as a second year student you know a little but you realize that you must be humble because you know 'a mere pimple of information on the as$ of the elephant that is medical knowledge'. So there is no point in being high on yourself as a 2nd year. So now when we are actually considered 3rd years I dont know. I am 2 weeks away from starting in on my mandatory 4 week elective between 2nd and 3rd year ... 4 weeks in emergency medicine in a NE Ont community. Looking forward to it as previous clinical placements haev been a mixture of family med and emerg and I am mostly interested in straight emerg so this will be awesome. And doing an elective in Northern Ontario moderately sized community as a 2nd yr student allows me to do much more than a 4th yr med student would do in larger southern ontario teaching hospital with the deep layer of medical hierarhcy in front of them. As a final note to those waiting for May 13th ... I havent regretted going back to school to get my MD yet in the first 2 years. It hasnt been easy at times and the romantic idea of med school is long gone but I am still thrilled with my decision. Beef Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hockeynut Posted April 26, 2014 Report Share Posted April 26, 2014 As always thanks for this Beef. It's always nice to hear an honest opinion from someone within the program. The 13th can't come soon enough. Currently killing time watching hockey and listening to the Grievous Angels. (in my opinion Chuck is the antithesis of my politcal views but it is very NE Ontario music nonetheless) . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8th.note Posted April 29, 2014 Report Share Posted April 29, 2014 Good luck with your electives and the transition to 3rd year, Beef. Hey I heard the 2nd years have to re-write the written exam. If that is true, I feel so bad for you guys. I thought the 2nd years were free birds after their OSCE. What a bummer that you might have to re-write the (8-hour?) exam. It almost seems unfair. Well, I guess we have to deal with the cards that are dealt out to us. The best of luck to you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Real Beef Posted April 30, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 30, 2014 Good luck with your electives and the transition to 3rd year, Beef. Hey I heard the 2nd years have to re-write the written exam. If that is true, I feel so bad for you guys. I thought the 2nd years were free birds after their OSCE. What a bummer that you might have to re-write the (8-hour?) exam. It almost seems unfair. Well, I guess we have to deal with the cards that are dealt out to us. The best of luck to you! Hmm, very interesting that this information has percolated out to NOSM-hopefuls . I suspect you know some of my classmates who have complained openly in public or online? I have remained tight lipped outside of NOSM because complaining openly will only get you in trouble ... you always see those news clips where students are kicked out for online antics or people losing their jobs due to pictures on their FB accounts or similar. Anyhow the rumor is true and it is a SIGNIFICANT sore point. Speaking of which I better get back to studying Beef Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drTat Posted May 1, 2014 Report Share Posted May 1, 2014 Hey beef! Thanks for the update! Can't wait for may 13th, now even more so after having read your thoughts! Being able to be part of a medical emergency in a rural hospital is very valuable and I'm glad you were able to embrace the experience! It reminds me of my time spent in the north in my last year of nursing. All the excitement, I did sutures too! But it sounds like you've got more of a knack than I ever did... Good luck with studying! And thanks again for the little boost right before the big news.. Tat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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