Hypertension Screening

Today I went to a local assisted living nursing home to screen some of their residents for hypertension. I only performed blood pressure checks on 3 people before this and even then I struggled to hear the Korotkoff sounds, so I was nervous. But as a general rule, elderly people are pretty patient, so I wasn't stressed to the max about it.

Turns out, it was loads of fun! I pretty much love anything I get to do where I actually have patient interaction these days. As expected, I learned quite a few more details about each of the residents than I needed to know for the screening, but I still love talking to people, so I wasn't upset about it. It reminds me a little of the days of volunteering at Good Samaritan Village in Hastings (I was volunteer of the year one year...not to brag or anything ;) ).

I am no longer nervous about checking blood pressures. Something about taking 10+ pressures in a half hour makes it less scary to do! Each of us are assigned a certain day and a certain assisted living facility throughout the year to do these checks. I think it's a great idea! It gives us practice and its goal is to help keep the residents healthy...I'm all about preventative medicine!

Today was also the start of a new unit. We are beginning the pelvis/lower limb unit--our last unit of anatomy! I cannot believe I'm already 8 weeks into my first year of medical school. During orientation week my M2 buddy said that the days would drag on for seemingly ever, but that weeks would fly by. Boy was she correct! It's crazy how quickly the year seems to be going.

Right now we are amidst a crazy few weeks of tests. It all started with our thorax/abdomen exam on this past Saturday. This week we have an ICE midterm (the class where we learn clinical things: professionalism, standard precautions, performing exams, etc). Next week we will have our lower limb anatomy exam on Saturday morning and then finally we will have our OSCE (I don't actually remember what this stands for) late the following week. During the OSCE we are given 10 minutes to perform a certain task with a patient. Possible tasks could be taking vitals, getting an accurate history, performing cranial nerve testing, and many, many others! This OSCE has 4 patient tasks and will take 40 minutes to complete. We will get a week off from testing after the OSCE before we have our first biochem exam. Yikes, what a daunting schedule! I'll just have to take it one test at a time...

I got to see my parents this weekend, which was a wonderful refresher. I've been missing them quite a bit lately. It was also a plus that I got to have my mom's home cooking! They sent me back with bags full of groceries and clean laundry (which I did by myself...I'm not completely worthless domestically) to face another week. I'm looking forward to having them in Omaha later this month too!

And thus begins another week in the med school grind.

Say "ahh."
Just a hint, this is not how human throats look. Or at least they shouldn't.
Quite obviously I'm learning lots of very valuable information at medical school...