The other day I was browsing through my new school's website, and I watched a news video that highlighted a "laproscopic simulator," which is when the doctor can do surgery by inserting tools through a few holes and using a camera, as opposed to opening someone up completely. The students they showed were OB-GYNs. Then I happened to talk with a relative of mine today who has to have a GYN surgery done, and her doctor is the first doctor in his specialty to do the surgery with a Da Vinci Robot. I thought the timing of that was interesting (though the two tools are different). The simulator looks pretty cool. I don't think we'll have access to it in my program, but I guess you can feel resistance on the tools when you are pulling and whatnot. My program also has one of the patient simulators that they can use to help students practice situations in the emergency room. It can bleed, breathe, its eyes respond to light and dark, and so on. When we interviewed it wasn't yet incorporated into the PA program, but they said they are trying to find a way to fit it into the curriculum. I hope we get to utilize it when I am there!

My relative who is having surgery is actually having a complete hysterectomy and a couple of lymph nodes removed because she has a uterine intraepithelial carcinoma (uterine cancer). Unfortunately I learned one of our failings as a medical system and how we treat our patients. After seeing her doctor, she was told that she had cancer, but they didn't know how severe or how they were going to treat it. She would have to wait to see the specialist....six weeks later!! Can you believe it?!? Just imagine that you have been told you have cancer and you have to wait SIX weeks to figure out how healthy you are. You don't know if you are dying, if you have to go through chemo or radiation. Unbelievable. Thankfully, she was able to travel to her state of residency for the winter months, saw this specialist who met with her right away and then scheduled her surgery a week and a half later. Quick communication is something I want to be good at with my patients.

On another note, I found a blog written by a first year student at the program I will be in next year, and they have at least 3 quizzes/tests/standardized patients per week from now until finals. =-0 With all this down time that I have, I'm starting to scour the internet and compile a megaresource of all the anatomy sites I can find. Hopefully that will ease the burden next year, if only for a tiny bit.