The Grind

A stethoscope is a very interesting thing. As a kid it is like the one thing you have to have to ‘play doctor,’ and it has become quiet the symbol for the health care profession. There is just something about putting a stethoscope around your neck that makes you feel important, like you could change lives. I received my first stethoscope at my white coat ceremony back in October. And, for the first time in my life I actually used it on a real person (other than myself, my family, or my friends) yesterday. We are midway through cardiopulmonary block and just recently had a clinical medicine exam over heart sounds and what they indicate etc. But still we had only listened to heart sounds online, through Ipod apps, or on each other. Lubb Dubb . . . Lubb Dubb . . .  Lubb Dubb . . . you should have seen us fiddling with our stethoscopes trying desperately to look and act like we knew what we were doing. 

That was about 2 weeks ago, and since then our school has decided to throw a great amount of material at us to the point where we are all exhausted! The brief glimpse of excitement about our profession and what we were learning quickly vanished beneath the weight of lectures and exams. But next week we only have 2 exams and so this weekend I decided to actually practice some medicine instead of study it every waking moment. With the end of the school year and graduations around every corner, the local hospital system did mass physicals for the area high school athletes. They asked some of us to help out and so most of my Saturday I spent acting like a real doctor, well a real medical student at least. I have been a part of these physicals before, as an athlete just trying to get cleared to play, and as an athletic trainer trying to keep athletes in their correct lines and direct them to the right places. But this time by far was the best!

I was rather nervous walking in with my stethoscope around my neck trying to remember how to use it. But I quickly settled into the routine and found practicing medicine (even the little bit I know) was way more conducive to learning than any textbook! I looked in ears, and throats, palpated lymph nodes, and listened to heart and lung sounds (even though we haven’t learned lung sounds yet). In those few hours I was able to put together several things we had been learning with things from what I knew before and even what I have yet to be taught. It was great to be part of the sports medicine field again and I even got to show off some of my knowledge of sports injuries with the doctors I worked with. But the best part of all, was when I actually heard a heart murmur that was in a real person, like not from an online tutorial!

But that was yesterday and now here I am yet again trying to make myself study for my physiology exam tomorrow. This is the end of week 6 of block 4 of my first year in medical school. Time really has flown since August, but man, July cannot get here fast enough! The beautiful weather, birds singing, and smell of spring beckons me outside to play and it is all I can do to study. Friday we had a 2 hour exam and then 2 lectures afterward. But with the little break in between a friend and I had to enjoy the outdoors so we passed baseball in our dress clothes to give us a break from all that seriousness.

So close! We are so close to the end of our first year, but we are so tired! It is coming down to the grind, where the rubber meets the road, and we are very aware that we are in medical school and not undergrad. But we will make it. One day at a time, one hour at a time, we will get there. And then before we know it, we’ll be using our stethoscopes on real patients as a tool for diagnosis and not a confidence booster as we hang it around our necks. So here’s to the grind, we all must go through it eventually, but you just have to do it and keep going!