An Excuse to Wear Heels

Today we met our first patients.  (Well, our first living patients.  Our first patients are really our cadavers.)  We had to dress professionally, which I could understand for the afternoon stuff, but not the morning.  In the morning we watched a pediatric oncologist take a history from a teen-aged cancer survivor.  They were at the front of the lecture hall.  They could only see the first few rows of us.  It should have been Dress Professionally If You Sit In The First Four Rows, Otherwise Anything Goes Day.  But really, that lecture/history was fascinating.  It was another experience that made med school feel real.  The people who accepted me actually believe that I am capable of doing this kind of stuff myself one day.  It's not the same as when I used to tell people I wanted to be a doctor, and they would say things like "Good luck."  I don't need luck.  If doctors got their degrees only by luck, I'd never let any of them near me.  Also, I respect any fifteen-year-old who's willing to discuss their medical and social history in front of over 250 complete strangers who are all listening closely and taking notes.  And, um, blogging about them.

Which is why, by the way, I'm avoiding ever saying where I go to school.  I don't intend to ever reveal any more than the vaguest details about any patient I ever see.  There are too many med students who have inadvertently violated HIPAA by saying too much on their blogs.  So in the interest of airing on the side of caution, not to mention politeness and human decency, I'm not even mentioning the state I'm in.

We spent the afternoon in smaller groups talking to different patients.  We weren't really given a guide for questions; we were just encouraged to ask about whatever interested us.  Then we got together with some fourth years and fit the information we'd gotten into a history.  It was kind of cool to realize how much we'd learned about these people just by asking a bunch of questions in no particular order as they occurred to us.  You'd never want to take a real history that way, but it was an interesting way to start.