Giving bad news to a patient/family is a difficult, but obviously necessary, task. While I’ll definitely need much more practice to become as comfortable as possible, today made the gears in my head start turning. Word choice is particularly interesting to me, especially the importance of “died/dead” vs. a euphemism and “analysis” vs. “investigation”. I’m not really sure how many opportunities I’ll have to practice this in a simulated environment, but at least I know that I have to be very intentional with my language.

Off the topic of bad news, Sam’s (dad’s) advice was incredibly useful: reevaluate patients from a clear slate at each interaction and if lab/test results are different from predicted. Even though it first seems like a time-consuming process, I’m sure that it’ll be fast and efficient once it becomes routine. Sam also had some great stories of personal experiences when this approach had… Continue reading →

Today was a tough day in terms of my optimism for the future. Not in a hopeless way, but in a “Oy vey, there’s a lot to do” sort of way. However, there are massive barriers towards doing the “a lot”. As a rising M2, this is my last free summer, so all of my future work will be done during “free time” outside of school/work, which I’m led to believe doesn’t really exist. This doesn’t mean that I won’t do anything, it just means that I’ll have to be methodical about picking and choosing projects.

One of my main interests (at least now) is EMR. Today’s talk was amazing, but mind-bogglingly upsetting. I knew there are plenty of issues with U.S. EMRs, but I didn’t understand the extent of the awfulness (and I probably still don’t). For the past few months, I’ve been thinking specifically about interoperability… Continue reading →

The most striking thing for me was how engaging today’s activities were. Patient safety isn’t one of the “sexiest” topics in medicine, but I learned a ton about communication over the course of the day. One particularly beneficial thing for me was how well the physician-nurse relationship was discussed. My med school had two interprofessional workshops this past year, but the student reaction to them was negative. The format in which we had interprofessional discussions today was much better, and gave me a much better idea of nurses’ goals and skills. Obviously, this is a very important part of the working the healthcare field, and interprofessional communication skills are a major asset, one which is not adequately developed in my school’s curriculum (at least in the pre-clinical years).

I also got ten research project ideas today, eight of which are EMR-related (which is a big interest of mine). Hopefully I… Continue reading →