Feeling More Physiciany

One more post for the night. Since our genetics class also finished last month, we have now begun physiology! This is the class I've been most excited for during the 1st year and so far it's just as great as I'd hoped. We spent the first few weeks discussing the basics, but now we're in the middle of cardiovascular physiology.

This last Wednesday was the most enjoyable day of med school for most of the students. It was possibly the most interesting and integrated learning experience we've had. In the morning, our physiology lectures were on heart sounds and murmurs. We put on fake stethoscope headsets that replicated different heart sounds and we learned what they meant. It was much more intense than I expected. There is so much that a skilled physician could tell about a heart just by listening to it. It blows my mind.

Then that afternoon, we met with "standardized patients" - people payed to behave like patients so we can test out our clinical skills! So we spent the afternoon palpating, percussing and auscultating a person's heart! We got to immediately use the knowledge we'd gained that morning. It was a great experience. It was also a great feeling to finally understand that essential tool, the stethoscope. It's a good feeling to have the basic techniques down. There are still many nuances of the heart that will take some time for me to be able to hear, but that's why I have 3 1/2 more years of medical school, right?