There is a course at my school that runs the entirety of first and second years. The Longitudinal Clinical Experience (LCE) is a program that works hand-in-hand with the Doctoring course to help prepare MS1s and MS2s for 3rd and 4th year clerkships. In the LCE course each student is matched up with a physician in the community as a mentor/preceptor. So every other week I go to a pediatric office in Goodyear, AZ where I have been seeing actual patients and learning how to adapt the clinical skills I learn in Doctoring to the real world.
Well, on Thursday last, for the first time ever, I saw patients all by my onesie and had to present to my attending! It was a pretty monumental occasion for me for a number of reasons. Let me tell you about my patients and I think it'll be pretty clear why.
Patient 1: This is the very first patient that I will ever have seen. It was 5 year old little boy who came in complaining of stomach pain for the last week. As it turns out the HPI was pretty bare because his parents are divorced and don't communicate well. Mom brought him in and he'd been at Dad's for the last several days so she had no idea how he'd been except that his stomach hurt when she dropped him off and it still hurt now. After the physical exam, I was still far from seeing anything wrong with him. So I went out and reported that everything was negative and the only thing I could think of was maybe a stomach virus. Well it turns out I was right up until the stomach virus part because actually it was CHILD ABUSE and he had a stomach ache because he didn't like to be around dad anymore. On my first try, sweet.
Patient 2 and 3: Brothers brought in for a variety of reasons but the issue of interest was that they both had wiener issues. I have no experience with wiener issues, especially uncircumcised wiener issues. A great follow up to patient number 1, right. (I later spent like 10 minutes talking about wieners with my brother and sister. We usually talk about poo.)
Patient 4: A little girl who had some wheals on her arms aka hives. I did my interview and exam, presented the case, my assessment, and plan. We went back in and after Dr. Wells did his interview and exam he followed my plan exactly! Super Stoked! Finally something that was a success of sorts.
Patient 5: A chubby 10 year old boy having and Asthma exacerbation because he also had a cold.
So it was a big day.
