Second Year Analysis

Being a second year is pretty crazy. In the two first weeks, I went through 3 pens, an entire 70 page college rule notebook, and half a pack of loose leaf notebook paper. And I learned everything I need to know about lungs. Three weeks later, I had mastered the kidneys. A week after that and I am half way through the cardiovascular system.

I definitely liked Physiology in college. Learning how organs work. Pretty fascinating. But now, as a second year medical student, we don't just cover the basics. We really have to understand the who, where, what, when, how, how likely, in what order, what dose, what color, and any other question you could ask regarding physiology and pathology of the body systems. And we have to understand these concepts in 2-4 weeks per system. I have been getting pretty frustrated. I can't type fast enough, can't focus my attention long enough, can't learn as thoroughly as I would like. I keep thinking about my future in rotations, maybe in residency, maybe as a practicing who-knows-what-kind-of physician. I meet a patient with any one of the hundreds of pathologies we have learned, and I blank. Bad news for my patient, and I sure look like an idiot. All because I didn't learn it second year.

Except that's just my imagination getting the best of me. Medical school is alllll about repetition. We have already repeated certain important concepts dozens of times, and in rotations/residency I will see them again and again and again before I ever see patients on my own. With time, these abstract and ridiculous concepts will be drilled into my head and my future hypothetical patients won't end up with me looking back with a blank face. Also - doctors don't actually have to remember all of the lab values and formulas and concepts and medications. There are apps for that...

So really after thinking about it, second year is just the first run through for each system. Every out of breath patient, every patient on dialysis, every patient with heart disease will drill in the concepts that I obsessively pour over until my fingers are black from ink and numb from writing/typing. Maybe I just need to remind myself to take a chill pill and learn what I can when I can. Which means adios to my blog and back to learning about EKGs.

*Because of my lack of fun medical facts, here is a scary pic of what sudden cardiac death looks like on EKG (v-tac, v-tac, v-fib, a-systole). Let's hope I don't see this too often in my patients.