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The call any med student in Emerg is waiting for: "There's been a massive...
It was shaping up to be quite a boring shift. Only a couple hours to go, and nothing very interesting. There must have been a notice in the paper that the super keen medical student (myself) was going...
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Poking a screaming child? That'll put hair on your...
"Bet you feel the testosterone surging through your veins now, eh?" the ER doc supervising me said. "That'll put hair on your chest." Then again, I'm sure everyone else in the ED (and all the other...
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Make sure you know what you are getting into... [part one]
One of the pieces of advice I was given as a pre-med, and that I frequently give to pre-med students (it's #7 on my Top 10 list of advice for pre-med students) is, "Make sure you know what medicine is...
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Make sure you know what you are getting into... [part two]
When I give that advice to pre-med students, I say it knowing full well that they'll respond to that advice the same way I did - by spending a bit of time learning about medicine, being fascinated by...
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Med Student Syndrome: I have ADHD.
Med Student Syndrome: A disorder, commonly seen among medical students, in which the student feels they suffer from every medical condition known to mankind. It's hard not to feel this way when you are...
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I don't think your arm is "bruised"
He was coming into the family doctor's office I was placed for an entirely different reason, this pleasant, absent-minded, blissfully unaware old chap. "Hello, young fellow!" he said, when I came into...
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My first NBME board exam
It's Christmas break.Thank God.I just wrote my Surgery exams and they were well-timed to occur just before the break. I'm not sure I would have lasted if I had to go back to work the day after my first...
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The strangest thing said to me during a pelvic exam
She had been fairly relaxed about the whole situation, considering, and after taking her history and doing the rest of the physical examination, I was standing at the foot of the bed. She had assumed...
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Drinking from the fire hydrant
My facebook status this week:Vitum is entering one of those hell weeks that usually end with his friends asking, "Why don't we see you anymore?" Trust me, my bed feels the same way.I spent most of...
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Internal Medicine so far
I'm well into my Internal Medicine rotation. Fortunately, I have been well-warned that internal medicine attendings are notorius for demanding perfection, immense detail, and will respond to any lack...
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Trauma Team vs. Delirium team?
My Internal Medicine attending made an interesting point today, brought up at a lecture by Dr Rivers (famous for his work on treatment of shock/sepsis in the emergency department, published in the...
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Planning for my 4th year
"When are you going to be a doctor?" is a question I get asked by patients quite often. I like to think they are asking because they are interested in my progress and eager to see me fulfilling my...
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That poor, poor transcriptionist. I almost admitted it was my first dictation.
I picked up the phone with a shaky hand, and slowly dialed the number for the hospital dictation system for the first time."Welcome to the Excelleris Express Dictation Service. Enter User ID , followed...
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First do no harm...unless you haven't gone to medical school
Albert was on the phone with his sister on a sunny afternoon last week, telling her about the trip they had gone on over the weekend and his wife's bingo winnings at the local senior's centre that...
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I sterilized a man today.
Sticks and stones may break my bones......but you better watch out, because I now know how to do a vasectomy.Thanks to my nimble fingers, three men limped out of the urology office this morning, their...
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The tragic outcome of a homeopath treating his daughter's eczema
It is devestating to hear stories of people deluded into believing that alternative medicine can cure ails. It's even worse when the one who suffers never had a choice in the matter.In England, a...
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Electives - any suggestions?
I'm currently looking into doing a two-week Emergency Medicine elective in any American city... any suggestions?Most of the ones I've come across so far in my research are four-week electives, but we...
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PDA Update: Why I RETURNED the PDA I chose!
UPDATED Again June 24 - Now includes the phone I chose AND how I like itIn the summer I wrote a fairly comprehensive report on which PDA I chose for my clerkship, taking into account the pros and cons...
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Maybe I'm not cut out for this... maybe I should think about quitting...
This post was actually written around March, about 6 months into my third year.I'll admit it. For a while there, in the middle of third year, I wasn't sure if this medicine thing was right for me. Just...
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"...and that's when I broke the child's arm in my bare hands."
The surgery I was watching was getting into the tedious stages, fitting and re-fitting a bone chunk that cracked off when the elderly woman had slipped on a banana peel (yes, you read that right). They...
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