first solo SP patient and first interview of med school applicant

Alright, first I have to vent. The school is arguably sort of in the middle of nowhere. There's no place close by to get coffee, food, drinks (alcoholic and otherwise) nearby. So late at night, when we're hungry or thirsty, our only option is delivery (very limited) and the water fountain, which tastes like dirty lake water on a bad day mixed with sewer run off after a category 4 hurricane. So when the year started, apparently they had some dispute with Pepsi, resulting in empty drinks machines lining the hallways. Well those were finally recently gotten rid off and now we have empty space where there once were drinks vending machines. Now they're saying they have coke providing new drinks machines on Wednesday, but Wednesday rolls around and still no machines. If that's not bad enough, there's a lack of food and coffee late at night. It blows, but other than that, things are cool. I heart complaining.

I had a couple of firsts today. The solo patient interview was great. It was nerve racking at first, I was really nervous when they told us to stand outside the door of the exam room and wait for a bell to tell us to go in. But then I calmed down when it all started. I had to do all those things I mentioned below and I had to do it in a way that wasn't rushed, that was empathic to the patient and cover all of the points within a set amount of time. So I did all of it, although it wasn't the smoothest. The patient didn't say a lot so that threw me off, I think we were all expecting them to give us a whole bunch of complaints and a really complex medical, family and social histories. But it wasn't and it was great. They tell you to make it like a conversation and you would think that would be easy, but it's not. There's so much you have to keep track of, the patient's story, the bits of info you need to get, the time you're spending to get it, being nice to the patient and attending to their needs. Just takes practice to get real good at it I think. We get a video and feedback tomorrow. This one wasn't graded and only we get to review the video. Next one is in October which we will get small group feedback.

So this week, my school started interviewing med school applicants for the 2014 class and we as students get a chance to sign up and interview them. Each applicant gets a faculty interviewer and student interviewer. In addition, we get a free lunch so there's a ton of people lining up to do this thing. I wanted to do it but I came to late to sign up and spots were all filled for this week. My friend had to drop out of her interview appointment to study so I took her place. I interviewed this guy and he seemed interesting. As you can imagine, the cream of the crop usually gets 1st cracks at interviews during the 1st week, so these guys are the "hot shot" applicants. I don't know their stats but he seemed like a real smart guy, a real contender, a strong applicant. Of course, I'm sitting there selling the PIL program the whole time cuz I think we are the bomb and very few schools have a program like ours. It's based on a Harvard or Stanford program or was it Yale, one of those. So I'm sitting there thinking if these hot shots come here for PIL, their hotness will rub off on the school and it will gain more fame and thus more $$$$ to get us high tech stuff like vending machines with drinks in them! Anyway, I've got 3 interviews lined up with more Hot Shots next week. More Hot Shots = More $$$ = Vending Machines w/ cold Drinks!

Anyway, had a good day today. Ended the day with some homemade mac and cheese with a couple of friends and Grey's Anatomy, which sucked by the way and I don't even really watch that show. Can't wait for the weekend for some R&R and some studying.

disclaimer: in case any faculty from my school reads this, I take seriously every interview and cherish the opportunity to welcome new blood to our school's already diverse and talented crowd of young minds. But I was serious about the vending machines...need them....now!