Fun day with ophthalmology

Today we had a lecture from a local ophthalmologist, then we went to his office.  At his office, we each had an eye dilated and were allowed to look into each other's dilated eyes with our ophthalmoscopes and with the slit lamps, as well as checking each other's vision.  This was really neat, because we have been trying to use our ophthalmoscopes with undilated eyes up until now, and the pupils have been so small we had a hard time seeing much at a time.

One of the other ophthalmologists in the office invited us to come watch an upper eyelid repair on a patient who had droopy (ptotic) lids, so several of us took turns watching.  That was pretty neat as well.

Spring semester

We indeed got spoiled over winter semester!  I feel so busy this semester that I have a hard time finding time to actually study!  The first section was not as bad... endocrinology... because there was no physical exam to learn along with it.  Neurology is tough in itself, but trying to remember all the parts of a neuro physical exam is hard! Add to that the fact that we are in class longer, and it makes my free time nil.  We now have pharmacology added to our Tuesday schedule in the evening, making for some very long days when we start class at 8 am and end at 9 pm.  Pharmacology is interesting, though.... we have some pharmacists from the hospital teaching us what we need to know.  That is nice that not only are they directing us towards how we can best do rotations later, but also giving us a few more familiar friendly faces when we do our rotations!

So, today I have my neuro physical exam.  Then Monday we have the neuro anatomy exam and neuro medicine science exam.  Monday we also start ophthalmology!  Of course, ophthalmology will also have a physical exam component to it.

I've also been warned to be afraid of rubrics... also known as orals.  Those will be coming soon as well.  The best I understand, they give you a case and you walk through it to the diagnosis and treatment, but you get points for certain things...asking about this symptom, doing this kind of exam, listing these as a differential diagnosis, etc.  Supposedly many students fail the first mock rubric. Yikes.

We also need community service hours.  We had only a few events last semester so we are all scrambling to get our hours in.  We have 2 events coming up on March 31st, so that's good.

Okay, back to studying for that physical exam.