I'm alive!

Oh man, I'm in trouble. Haven't blogged for dayzzzzz. I guess my lack of blogging is some indication of how busy we've been.  Alright alright I will catch you guys up with EVERYTHING we've been up to, now that we are starting our LAST didactic term!

First, the not-so-exciting stuff:

1. Study/class/books/exams/most of life - Slowly been making our way through all the clin med topics. So far, we have done Derm, EENT, Endocrine, GI, Hematology, Pulmonology, Infections Disease, Cardiology, Urology, Nephrology, Neurology, Rheumatology, and Orthopedics. That leaves us with Geriatrics, Pediatrics, OB/GYN, Surgery, and ER med to cover for our last term to get us prepared for rotations. Last term we had Radiology which from what I hear, is not offered by all PA programs. So overall I think we were glad to have that course. During summer, we drop Radiology and instead take Behavioral Med. Also, we are studying for our oral board exams. Don't want to scare any of you too much, but it's at the end of the summer term and basically you get pimped by your faculty on the spot to give your differential diagnosis for two symptoms, then you have to give them the full run-down for two different conditions. And it could be any symptom/condition from this huge list. And people are starting to study for it already. And I'm getting stressed out just blogging about it so I'll stop here.

Ok now more exciting stuff with pictures:

2. Clinical Skills Lab - We have had two so far, one in Winter, one in Spring, and have one left in the Summer. Basically these are the labs where you learn how to start IVs, give injections, insert NG tubes,  get ABGs, venipuncture, sterile technique, insert urinary catheters, etc. These are on a Saturday, starting around 8am and ending around 2-3 pm, and we usually get a week day off the following week. Although the days run long, they go pretty quick, are sort of fun, and a confidence booster to get your IV/venipuncture practice in. Oh, also we are fed breakfast and lunch which equals joy in my life. I'll let the photos do the rest of the talking:

First IV ever.

Practicing hemoccult tests with chocolate pudding fake poop shmears.

Capturing first-stick facial expressions. 

Please appreciate the textbook-worthy weal I made.

Free food = happy PA students.

 3. We finally got our individual rotations sites:

It was a big deal.

4. PA Olympics - This is an annual competition for all 5 of the Philly area PA programs: PCOM, Drexel, Arcadia, Phila U, and Salus. Each program raises money and at the end, all the money goes to the winning program's organization of choice.  I didn't go but my classmates did a great job representing PCOM and from the photos it looked like alot of fun. Didn't take home the trophy but we won trivia :) Also it is probably the only BYOB event of the entire PA program, so I'm sure that helps haha.

Bros getting swol.

Speculum egg race.

5. Community Service Projects - One of the courses unique to our program is Community Service. In the Fall term we write a paper and do a powerpoint on a community health non-profit organization of our choice. In the Spring, the continuation of the course is to address a community health need and execute a 45 minute presentation to our population of choice, educating them on whatever topics we feel are most important. At first, it honestly sounded like a drag but it ended up being one of my favorite experiences in PA school thus far. We decided to talk to a first-grade classroom about germs and the prevention of disease, focusing on hand-washing and proper coughing/sneezing techniques, but also including bits on the immune system, exercise, diet, and other healthy habits.

We had the kids act out the immune response, so the boy in the upper left is a B-cell making antibodies, and the girl in the lower right is a macrophage presenting an antigen to a Helper-T. Yeah that's right, we came up with that. So clever, I know, I know :)

I've never made friends so quickly before in my life!

The kids were so cute! They were so excited and happy to have us there, and they're at that age where they just love to participate and talk about themselves. I definitely think we cut ourselves a break picking young kids as our audience because they are really easy to entertain and work with. When I started my segment on drugs and smoking, immediately they all wanted to tell me about how persistent they were in trying to talk this relative/parent into quitting smoking, how bad drugs are for you - they all wanted to teach me! Anyway, it was one of the best days I've had so far, and reassuring for me personally to know that I may very well have a future calling in peds :)

6. Face of the PCOM PA program. No big deal ;D

7. Casting Lab - During our Orthopedics block of Clin Med, we had a one day casting and splinting lab.  Dr. Auth, director of the Drexel PA program, is such a great, entertaining, humble, and fun lecturer - probably my favorite guest lecturer we've had so far. He said when he first started practicing, casting and splinting was one of his favorite skills to do because it was the only thing he knew for sure that he was good at. I have to agree. It's basically paper-mache haha.

Getting plastered on a Tuesday morning wooohoooo! We are so wild and rowdy...aaaand I tell really lame jokes hahaha.

9. Advanced Life Support - This was a 3-day course built into our curriculum to get our advanced life support certifications as a continuation of our basic life support skills. Not much else to it, just brushing up on our CPR, EKGs, learning about what you really do when a heart stops beating, and taking an exam at the end.

Just trying to be an artsy fartsy hipster PA student during ACLS training.

8. National Quiz Bowl - Every year at the National AAPA Convention, PA programs compete against each other in a trivia style competition. A couple months ago, our faculty asked if anyone was interested in being on the team. Me personally, with my competitive figure skating/gymnastics/pageant background, how do I put this...I like to win at things hahaha. So of course I volunteered, and for the past few months the three of us met with Jen, one of our faculty, to practice and prepare. The competition started out with 64 teams that completed a 50-question M/C clicker competition projected on the big screen. The top 36 scoring teams then got called up round by round (4 teams at a time) to go up on stage and compete in the buzzer portion of the competition. Nerve-wracking to have to sit there and just hope and wait your team eventually gets called, and we were so ecstatic when we finally were! We were eliminated in the first on-stage round - Wake Forest ended up winning our heat and advancing 2 more rounds to the finals, so I guess I don't feel too bad we lost to them. I'm just proud of myself for buzzing in and answering the first question of our round correctly (even if I completely blanked for 5 seconds and almost choked on stage like Miss Utah haha) and I think I make a pretty good argument for being able to handle a good pimping from my future preceptors :) After it was over, the director of our program came up to us and shook our hands, congratulating us and telling us how proud the program was for our performance. Definitely another highlight of my PA school experience thus far.

Our fan club. <3 you guys back.

Our classmates and even our faculty were there to support us and cheer us on! 

Jen encouraged us to dress up in costumes and thanks to my ingenious idea, we were most definitely the best dressed team there.

The stage.

Who cares if we didn't take home the cup? Professional photogs be all over us *brushes shoulder.  This was during the multiple choice round. Obviously I am posing candidly, trying to look intelligent.

OK that's it from the last few months I guess. Sorry again about the lack of updates! School is just crazy. Hope you all understand...or you will eventually when you are in PA school too :)