Archive for September, 2003
ICM
September 2nd, 2003Today was our first day of Introduction to Clinical Medicine. In ICM we get to slap on our white coats and go to a hospital once a week to practice our interviewing skills with real patients…not just standardized patients (actors).
At first I was excited because it would be a new experience, but then I was worried that it might turn into the same useless chit-chat with patients that I’ve done tons of while volunteering in hospitals in the past. It’s funny because everyone (adults and students) always says how valuable volunteers are and how much they help out the patients…but in reality, all you do is act as the doctor’s and nurse’s bitch for a few hours and make small talk with the patients. Now I know that small gestures like that actually can be valuable to the patients’ hospital experience, but it shouldn’t be over-exaggerated by the volunteer coordinators.
Oops, didn’t mean to digress there. Anyway it turned out to be kind of cool, because while I was speaking with my patient, her phone rang, and she said that she couldn’t talk because the “doctor” was in the room. That was cool and definitely enough to make my day.