First Clinical Encounter

Yup, today was the day I broke my clinical experience virginity. Heck, I can't even remember the last time I'd been in a hospital outside outpatient clinics, it sure was a hell of a long time ago. I guess being unfamiliar with the hospital environment isn't such a bad thing considering the reasons one would have to visit such a place. But i guess I should get used to it, and quickly.

I was lucky with my first patient. They were nice, answered all my questions to the best of their ability and waited patiently while I sat there thinking about what I should say or scribbling down notes. A lot of the time my thinking would be along the lines of something like this:

to self: ok, i need to ask about his bowel movements
i can't just say "how are your bowel movements?" cuz it sounds silly
how about "how are your bowels?"
no, that would confuse them...maybe "do you get constipation?"
no, thats too closed a question...
...
10 seconds later...
"are you going to the toilet ok?"

*SIGH*

Seems like it's something that's going to take a lot of getting used to, but I think the consultation went pretty smoothly as far as things go with being a 3rd year med student. Perhaps I really can do this doctor business. Well I guess not all patients are easy to handle but I'll get there. I guess I was worried I might be one of those medical students who dropped out after 3rd year due to being unable to "handle the challenges of the clinical environment" as it says in our guide books. I'm sure there are many other challenges in the clinical environment, but I'm not sure why I was feeling so nervous before my first patient encounter in particular.

It seems pretty stupid now that I think about it, I mean, what's the worst thing that could go wrong? Sure I might piss off some random dude (who'll I'll probably never see again) or make a fool of myself by trying to be all professional with my tie and name badge without actually knowing anything, but its not like those things haven't happened before in my life. And it's not like they can suspend my medical registration before I've even received it or anything like that (the worst they could do is confiscate my Student Doctor name badge), since we're not even touching the patients (yet) beyond hand-shaking. I guess it's just one of those things that's just a natural trigger for nervousness which you can't do anything about. Well you could use Bach's Rescue Remedy spray which some people use before job interviews to calm them down (it works on cats and dogs, apparently) but that's not something I'd rely on. I bought one of those sprays before my Med interview but I was so nervous that I forgot to use it *fails* but hey, I still got in without it so go figure. Yeah, I guess you can never get away from stressful situations like those in life, so might as well treat them as learning experiences to improve your success in your next encounter. I still need a lot of learning to do.

I had a pretty long day today, so probably might relax a little before getting into some work. The 8 o'clock starts over the past three days have begun to take their toll as well >< been so tired recently. Lucklily I start at 11 tomorrow and have a light day so I might join Simon at the MTG draft tomorrow afternoon. I should probably ring home too, haven't done that in a while...

Yea, so my first clinical experience was a good one. I'm actually even sort of looking forward to next week's wards already, surprisingly. Hopefully I can get that case history written up before then, on top of all the other stuff going on with uni (still need to pick hospitals, submit topic for critical literature review, read those research articles for medical assessment project, study, study and more study) and hopefully catch up on some sleep.

Sayonara~