Second guessing medicine || RHS || SGU Term 4
Life:
To edit or not edit, the problem with vlogging
I filmed a whole week at the beginning of Term 4 in FTMC! It surprised me that I actually loved filming and I enjoy editing, but aesthetic graphics! Sound effects! The creative lure takes time and space. Memory space actually. My notes and ebooks have taken up 90% of the memory on my laptop and I can’t import the footage! I’ll be heading to Target to get a flash drive. Reminds me of presentations in high school, oh how my palms sweat.
Redoing our yard
Sounds dry, almost as dry as the desert climate I live in. It surprised me, but I love landscaping. The transformation of personality from a little bit of dirt and rocks is incredible. I can’t wait to show you all the outcomes! For now, a moment of silence for my back - trying to hold up shoveling all this dirt wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow.
Switching to a paleo diet
During small group, our facilitator remarked about how a patient caught him outside the hospital smoking. His response was “do as I say and not as I do”. It’s so strange how we’re taught to take care others, but we tend to be the worst caretakers for ourselves. In my health coaching classes, most of my classmates have switched to a holistic diet. The facilitators say to let the results speak for themselves. I’m always trying to lsoe weight, but I’ve noticed my energy is more steady. Digestion, skin, and hormones all seem to trend steadily. The biggest downside is the prep and the need for the foresight to be deliberate in what I eat.
I spin, Kal sleeps
The intensity of class is dynamic. I competed in bodybuilding and powerlifting in a past life and I have to admit that exercise was the first to fly out the window when class got tough. Hopefully, this is a turning point. Exercise has been an anchor for me. It’s starting to feel like a morning meditation or “me time”. I think I heard somewhere it’s like starting the day off with a win. I hope I can keep this up.
Rethinking medicine
I can’t believe I’m even writing this into existence, but I’m rethinking medicine. Maybe it’s the isolation of year 2 in a pandemic, but seeing the abuse of healthcare workers has made looking forward a little dimmer. The thing is that I do love learning medicine. I do love helping people. Well on that note, I’ll be starting up journaling.
Term 4 RHS:
I heard that CRS was the hardest and then it’s uphill. I’m starting to question that. Respiratory & Hematology Systems (RHS) includes about 2 weeks of Lung pathology, pharmacology, and micro. Then about 2 weeks of hematology and oncology pathology, pharmacology, and micro. It was brutal to throw anti-cancer drugs and anti-malarial drugs at the end.
I changed my study routine because I still was running out of time. I no longer write my one-page notes. I organize my notes into micro, pharm, and path notes instead of weeks. For path, I’ll take notes on pathoma, watch sketchy path, then add anything from lectures. For pharm, I would find a pre-made chart to annotate anything from lecture on and also watch sketchy. I do the same for micro and it has saved me so much time!
RHS Pace
I wish I was more consistent for the entirety of the module. I got burnt out around week 3, so I started to fall behind especially with the Anki mishap. If you can, I would run the related Anki cards from the day and hammer in what you learn the day of. It quickly adds up. Especially with some of the lectures seeming like lists of micro bugs or diseases.
Small groups can’t stop, won’t stop
The marathon of small groups continues. I attended most, but the micro ones I wished I didn’t. I look forward to the next module because I saved up my misses for lectures and small groups!
RHS Content
Pathology: they’re starting to sound the same
Micro, pharm, and path were constantly running each over. I think there were 2 days where we had the micro lecture first and the path lecture was right after and it was the same exact topics where 95% of information was the same, but that 5%…There was
Pharm
Compared to CRS drugs, respiratory pharm isn’t so bad. It’s mostly about adverse effects and knowing what drug package should be prescribed when. However, anti-cancer and anti-malarial drugs come about a week before the test. They are gnarly and there’s a lot of them. They have a lot of adverse effects to know. I almost wish I learned them ahead of time.
Micro
I really do enjoy the micro professors and their lectures. They are so succinct and they point out what’s important to pay attention to.
The Exam
I don’t know why I thought RHS would be better than CRS. It was a challenging exam. Most of the questions were 3rd or what seemed like 5th order. I did a different strategy of doing all the easy questions and then coming back for the questions that required more brainpower. The IMCQ and Sakai questions did not do it justice. I wish I had more practice doing with higher-order questions
Update: I got my score. I honestly walked away thinking I failed. Looked into what it means to repeat the term. It wasn’t as bad as I thought! So if you walk away feeling off, there’s hope!
RHS Outside Resources
By around week 2, I completely stopped listening to lectures except for the micro lectures. So I relied heavily on outside resources, unfortunately for my wallet.
Pathoma: Tried and true. Like I said previously, I base my pathology notes on the videos. SGU content tends to include more detail so I do back and read the lecture slides looking for anything to add.
Sketchy path, micro, & pharm: There is so much to cover and most diseases sound so similar, it feels like sketchy is required for me. I wish I had time for 2 passes.
USMLE-rx: Wow, I loved having USMLE-rx. Besides helping me look at the associated first aid questions. I loved the workbooks which are reminiscent of grade school workbooks. And I love that simplicity! I would also do questions from their flashcards and question bank.
AMBOSS: I ended up buying Amboss near the end because my cohort worked to get a 40% off deal. It seems every other month, someone in the class works to get this discount so I wouldn’t feel pressured to buy it if it comes up. Since SGU will give USMLE-rx and require us to do questions from it, I felt it would be helpful to work on another question back. I also love their articles, it’s like a wiki for all the concepts. They also have some great summary tables on their articles. I would say not completely necessary, but nice to have.
Anki: My best friend. So it is a thing that most of the Term 4 and Term 5 cards will come from Zanki. So I spent some time pulling from that deck into my school deck. At first, I pulled everything that came up but that was a mistake. There is a lot of duplicates, beware!
What would I do differently
I started to run out of steam around week 3. I wish I took at least a day off before I burnt out.
Find a way to get 2 passes on sketchy. 1 pass + anki was not enough. Plus there were so many anki cards that I didn’t see the cards as often as I wanted.
Well off to the last module of Term 4, I’m ready! To be done at least. See you on the other side!
Warmly, Rainee