Thursday, July 27, 2006
The struggle for happiness continues
Yeah, it's me again. Gripped by blogging frenzy, I am, and care not I if I blog rubbish. Lalala.
Anyway at the end of one week of Family Medicine, I'm quite honestly surprised by the posting so far. If not totally mentally-stimulating and great exciting glove-tugging fun, well at least it's really not quite the sedate snoozefest I had expected it to be. You can see I don't have a great opinion of COFM-related stuff. The GP I'm attached to is quite enthusiastic about teaching, and he likes to talk to us a lot during lull periods in the clinic (surprisingly he doesn't see a lot of patients in a day, so I wonder why my GP seems perpetually crowded and I need to wait more than an hour to see her). So far he's raised a lot of very pertinent and thought-stimulating issues that he faces as a GP, like how far to go in patient care when the patient in front of you is under a company contract, which means he only pays a meagre sum for consultation, and the third party is undercutting the profits you gain from the medication you sell this patient. And it's really easy to talk about communication in a lecture theatre, but it doesn't get as real as when you're sitting in a clinic watching things unfold, realising how big a difference simple body language can make, and how far a few words of explanation can go in establishing a good relationship with your patient. And it's important to establish a good relationship, of course, otherwise your patients won't come back to you.
Lots of issues, and some of my GP's opinions about the way he runs his practice are quite startling to an idealistic medical student like me, but I can see where he's coming from in having those opinions. It's all too easy to think you want to provide equal care for everyone, and save the world, but in an imperfect world bound by limitations, it's hard to live up to those ideals. Somehow that reality hits me a lot harder in the general practice clinic than in hospitals, I wonder why.
As with all things the posting has upsides and downsides, the downside being the laughably ridiculous tutorials where we spend an inordinate amount of time "discussing" and "tackling issues". The impracticality of exercises like this is even more obvious when you compare how little a student takes away from these sessions compared to when he or she sits in a clinic and observes those issues at first hand. All this sitting-around-in-circles sessions reminds me too much of Lifeskills in RI, which was just really another waste of time. The department tries too hard to make soft indistinct concepts into solid principles that just don't really get across, and it puzzles me because this form of teaching seems to restrict the thought process when it really should be free-ranging and flexible. Haha now I've gone and confused myself, I don't even know what I'm saying. Ignore my babbling.
I'm looking forward to a lot more interesting clinic sessions. Hopefully the polyclinic attachment will be just as enjoyable. I don't think I'll ever look at a GP in the same way again. Respect.
I really need to find some productive or enjoyable (somehow I find the two hardly ever go together) way to spend my evenings. Certainly sitting and staring at a computer screen with nothing to do drives the mind into really bad bouts of mind-numbing apathy and despondence. Which is unpleasant, to say the least. Sigh, life's a bitch.
Ending off another rambly post, something cute. This is a T-shirt design, from
Threadless. The site carries T-shirts with really funky designs, and it makes my fingers itch to get a hold on them, but no, I shall resist. The cost, and shipping from the U.S., is really too much of a hassle for me to get over.
You've got to love Anatomy. And knots.
Avaris / 7/27/2006 10:19:00 PM
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