Wandering around the downtown eastside

This week, I had my first session with my family physician “preceptor”(aka supervisor). Basically each of us is paired up with a family doctor for 4 afternoons this term to shadow them and maybe participate in some interviewing of patients or vital sign checks. As it turns out, my family physician does geriatric outreach work in the downtown eastside. It was quite interesting to spend the afternoon with her visiting people in their homes (actually they were all living in assisted living facilities which are basically a cheaper/less care version of long term care facilities). We just chatted with them to see how they were doing & see if there was anything we could do to help them. Our chats are part of her assessment of their state of mental health and in fact, there is a goal to each of her questions. Her role (along with the nurse that accompanies her) is much broader than the traditional medical model and extends into helping with the determinants of health like safe housing, having enough food to eat, etc. Essentially they end up doing a fair bit of social work as part of their jobs. It was interesting and nice to get some exposure early on to the variety of work that family physicians do. In addition to doing that work part-time, she also has a part-time family practice too. When I asked her if she finds it depressing she said that she finds the many ‘worried well’ who come to her family practice far more tiring than helping these people who, while many have pretty difficult lives, really need her help. Fair enough. She also told me that a physician once gave her good advice as she was heading into study medicine as a headstrong young female activist. It was to put her soul in a plant and nourish it until she’s finished her program, then to reconnect with it when she’s finished studying. Because in her view, it’s impossible to maintain your sanity without doing that. Yikes. Oh well, it helps manage my expectations of what is yet to come, I guess. On Friday in the lab this week we looked at the heart. While I’ve studied all of these organs in biology briefly at some point, seeing them live is so much better! The aorta is unbelievably big – you can fit 4 fingers in the opening as it exits the heart. Amazing. I know, I know, you’re thinking “Geez, you’ve gotta get out more.” And you’re probably right. But I tell ya, the body is an incredible machine. My classmate leaned over to me in a lecture about the cell this week and said that when she was at the Elton John concert at GM place the other night she started looked around, seeing all the movement and thinking "it's like I'm inside a cell". Check out this video clip - it's fantastic. Yes, I think studying medicine makes you even more geeky than you ever were before.