Week 3 and already overcommitting...(not quite underdelivering yet)

Well, I’m finally feeling a little more organized re schoolwork and I think a routine is starting to develop. Perhaps in light of this sense of semi-normalcy, my reach may have exceeded my grasp this week when I signed up for 4 clubs at clubs night. Ack! They all seem to provide an opportunity to learn more about certain areas and I’m so interested in finding out about them all so I signed up for more vs less. I signed up for clubs on Pediatrics, Mental Health, Family Practice and Community Health. But I know I’m also intending to sign up for an undergrad UBC club on interdisciplinary health. Hmm, these are the problems when you’re a generalist I guess. Too interested in everything. :) Let the flurry of club-related email commence! So far, I’m finding the program to be a really nice combo of hard science and soft skills like communication with patients, etc. Our communications tutor today likened the communication skills we’ll be developing over the next couple of years to those of excellent customer service agents who know how to deal with difficult customers. A very interesting analogy. Immediately I thought of some of the service superstars that I used to work with (Michelle, Nancy, Kevin, John, etc) and their amazing talent with troublesome people. I so appreciate those skills and look forward to honing my own in that area (previously I had perfected the hand-off to Michelle, Nancy, etc. to razzle and dazzle them into a happy state again). Today our communications tutor interviewed a patient while we watched. We’re just at the "developing a rapport stage". In our small group meetings, volunteer patients from the community meet with us to truly share their own medical stories. It's a priviledge to have these people so generously helping us learn these communication skills. Basically the person comes in and sits with one of us in the front who's playing "doctor" and the team watches in order to provide feedback after the interview on what went well and what needs improvement. There’s so much to remember to ask as you’re doing these interviews in addition to listening to the answers they’re giving you, of course. It's a bit dizzying at this point but I’m sure it will become a natural process over time. I must say, right now I’m feeling pretty daunted by the thought of actually talking to patients directly. I'm such a lame-o. I think it will be an extremely useful course! Besides all the normal school stuff, I think I accidentally signed up to be a Student Affairs rep. I’m not sure what that means exactly and was in fact just kindly asking a question to the coordinator of Student Affairs about whether anyone had come forward from the island program yet (we need one rep per site). She said no and that she’d put my name in the hat. I don’t really know what I was thinking by asking, I guess I was just thinking about how when you through a question out to a group of 260 people everyone probably thinks someone else is replying so I worried that no one had gotten in touch with her. The whole "tragedy of the commons" thing. Anyway, I’m going to a meeting on Monday to find out more and see if I’m actually interested. Happily, I've managed to arrange to do some shadowing at a centre with some health care professionals from a number of different modalities (I think that's the proper lingo) - traditional chinese medicine, naturopathy, massage therapists, energy healing, nutritionists, etc. It's just going to be 4 afternoons this fall, but I'm really pumped about it! Great exposure early on to some really innovative health care professionals working together as a team. Cool. Well, tomorrow’s another anatomy lab. Hopefully this week I won’t have another near-fainting experience. Perhaps I could opt instead for a weekly field trip this fall to the amazing Bodyworlds 3 exhibit at Science World. I'm actually pretty keen to go see this and think it will be extremely helpful for reviewing anatomy - although I know it's been quite controversial as it's toured around the world. Anyone care to join me? PS I'm keen keen keen to have people leave comments to keep me motivated to write here. I don't know how people who write newspaper articles stay motivated. So, in case you don't know how, here's what you do. Click on the comments hotlink at the bottom of each entry (the coloured part that says "0 comments"). Then type in your comment, and where it says "Choose an identity" hit "Other"then you can just type in your name (as you want to see it displayed) and hit "Publish Comment". There may also be a little word scramble that you need to type in so it's not a fake blog comment entry, but that will be quite clear. Let me know if you have any problems (via email). Look forward to hearing from you!