I just had my first OSCE today (pronounced AH-skee). It stands for Objective Structured Clinical Examination. The 2nd and 3rd -year students pretend to be patients, while we, the lowly 1st-years, come and do tests on them. Each of us reads an outline of a case, makes a hypothesis as to what's wrong, does some tests on the "patient" who pretends to "test" a certain way, then writes whether or not we're changing our hypothesis, based on the tests.
I think mine went well. I had to take someone's blood pressure three times because I couldn't hear her heartbeat on the first two tries! I didn't know I was nervous until I started doing the tests and realized my hands were shaking! (ever try to wrap a blood pressure sleeve around someone while your hands are shaking?)
Then my classmate, Michael, and I got together and learned how to test ankle strength--we have to teach the class tomorrow. I always wondered how I would react to touching somebody's foot in therapy. But context is amazing--I had my hands all over his foot, feeling around for the different tendons. Great stuff. It's amazing how, with practice, I'm starting to map out what's going on beneath the skin, using my sense of touch! And I love it that each of my classmates gets so excited about it, too. "I found it! I found it!" is a common exclamation in the lab. Or, "Here, feel hers--it's really prominent..."
The natural high that accompanies discovery, the brisk autumn breeze flipping through the changing leaves around campus, the awesome care-package that just arrived from home... I'm definitely in full-on student mode!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment