My Letter to our Provost Regarding Saving DMC

Date: March 25, 2014 Shelley Berkley CEO and Senior Provost shelley.berkley@tun.touro.edu Dear Ms. Berkley: I am a fourth-year Osteopathic medical student speaking on behalf of a majority of the class of 2014 and in the interest of the future of Touro University California. You may be aware that third and fourth year clinical rotations are critical for completion of the Doctor of Osteopathy. However, you may not be aware how difficult it is to obtain and keep these rotations for Touro students. For example, in 2012 Ross University purchased exclusive rights for their students at Kern Medical Center in Bakersfield Ca, leaving many of our classmates to scramble for a location to do their third-year clinical courses. In addition, more than half of each class has to move away for their third and fourth years, creating a financial and logistical burden for the students, especially those with families. There exists an opportunity for Touro to improve the problems with clinical rotations while simultaneously saving an important part of our local healthcare safety net. I am speaking of Doctors Hospital San Pablo. DMC provides over 70% of the hospital beds in West Contra Costa but gets scant funding from the county and is in danger of closing without additional funds. It is the closest ER for local residents and without it emergencies would have to drive up to an hour in traffic. Touro medical and pharmacy students already perform some of their clinical rotations there so this would also be another loss for the University if they close, or if another institution were to take it over. For more information, please see http://www.savedmc.org/ I believe it would be in the best interest of Touro students for the University to step up and help DMC in the short term but I think the hospital should also figure into long-term planning. It would be an ideal location for an Internal Medicine residency program, with plenty of pathology but it would also serve a community in need, which is in keeping with the mission of the University. Indeed, a fully functional residency program may negate the need for the contracted hospitalists, which may improve the bottom line. Steps like this will help keep us competitive going forward but is also a public relations advantage that will draw attention to Touro. I imagine a Touro University Hospital East Bay and I encourage you to seriously consider this possibility. Sincerely, Kelly Campbell OMS-IV

Figuring out what to study

Figuring out exactly what to study is probably the most difficult task in medical school. There are 1,000's of pages of books, another 1,000 pages of handouts and slides plus 100's of pages of summary material. Then there is the internet with Wikipedia, Youtube and tons of other useful sites. Oh, and there are lectures and labs too! There just aren't enough hours in the day to cover it all. So, I try to figure out which ones are the most useful to get an understanding of the material.
Thus far, I have found that there are a couple of books that cover all of a particular subject, like Robbin's for Pathology but some subjects require a careful reading of the powerpoints produced by the instructor.
It seems like I get this sorted out just before for the exam. Then I have a couple of days to cram it all in!

O.M.O.C.

Not that I need them but there are daily reminders of how much older I am than my fellow med students. There's the lengthy lunch-time discussions about Mario Cart that I can't participate in or the blank stare when I mention TJ Hooker. Not to mention being above the fray when couplings are discussed; I simply sit there enjoying the drama in a pleasantly detached position. It's not that I don't remember having been there but I just don't miss it. In fact, I am amazed that anyone can put up with the demands of medical school and still have any social life at all!

It is nice to give some advice from my aged perspective and I'm sure I give way too much of it but I don't think I could stop. Why? Because I genuinely care for these people. I want them to succeed and I want to be part of it, so I give advice. Or, maybe I'm just a pompous ass..... anyway I know people will take what they need from my missives and leave the rest - they didn't get into medical school by being automatons.

My lab group decided to name ourselves "Kelly's Kids". I thought we should have been "Gluteal Cephalic" but I lost. So, we now sound like a charity telethon. I'm touched by this show of affection even if it's a jab at my age. The funniest moment came in geriatrics lab when I was presenting our group discussion and a student from across the room made a comment about being close to geriatric myself. The room erupted in laughter, myself included.

The discussion was interesting. Being "close to geriatric" I listened to these men in their mid to late 20's talking about the elderly and remembering feeling the same way when I was younger. Once you're over 70, your elderly and becoming frail, you need people to talk a little slower or you become wise somehow. I don't think 70 sounds so old anymore and I've know enough people in their 60's, 70's and 80's to know a few things about the 'elderly'. First, grumpy old men were grumpy young men second, stupid people don't ever get wise with age and a retired NASA engineer will understand more of what you say than a 20-something college grad.

I'm enjoying my unique position among this amazing group of young people, or as I call myself: The O.M.O.C. Old Man On Campus.

On Procrastination

I will do anything to stave off studying pharmacology, even update this blog. Not because it's especially boring because I find it pretty darn interesting and it's of course a major tool in the physician's tool kit. It's that I'm so damn bad at memorizing and that's what Pharm is, rote memorization at its finest. There isn't a lot of understanding to be had in the subject and it is filled with tables of drugs, their class, uses, side effects etc etc etc. Physiology is where I shine but that's only a tiny part of medical school. I think it was about a month of class last semester then it was back to "what is this drug or that drug.....". Even when Pharm has critical thinking, if you don't remember the name of the damn drug, then you can't solve the puzzle presented to you in the question.

Oh well - it just has to be done, like removing a bandage or breaking up with your girlfriend. Unpleasant but happy to have it over.

one year?!

Yes, it has been a year since I last posted anything but that could be due to the feeling that I am speaking in an empty auditorium with the lights off. This is a viscous circle - no updates = no readers = no updates and so on..... So, I will try to update more often this year.

I survived my first year of medical school relatively unscathed, meaning that I never had to remediate a topic or even a test despite the fact that I could have been more efficient at studying. That's probably the most important thing I learned in the first year was how to study the massive volume of material being thrown at us. I had never really had to study before and definitely never had to memorize so much information. In physics and math you don't memorize so much data. The trick there is to do the practice problems and be able to do similar ones on the exam. In medical school you can't really practice any problems, you memorize memorize memorize. One exam I added up the total number of lecture slides we had to cover and it was over 1,000! These aren't the usual prompt the lecture minimalist type of slides either, they are text heavy things that are packed with details about diseases, drugs, procedures and microbes.

On top of the work required for school, I decided to form a Grappling club on campus. This hasn't really required too much effort, just setting up practices and helping to instruct the members. Oh, and we had to petition the student government to pay for some new mats. That was a hassle and I'll blog on that at another time. Luckily, another student helps out with instruction but I've been the one to do everything else.

The real time suck has been my volunteering to be the student government VP of Finance. Not only am I keeping the books, writing the checks and keeping an eye on expenditures, I have to write the regulations, setup the files and clean up the bookkeeping from past neglect.

I guess I don't need more to do but I will try to keep this blog updated. Mostly for myself I guess as it may be fun to look through the posts in the years to come and see the condensed version of this journey and what I had to say about it.

Update after 4 weeks

Four weeks in and I'm wishing that I had more hours in the day because I feel that I'm not studying enough, not spending enough time with my wife, not doing enough around the house, not doing enough around the yard, not spending enough time with friends. You get the picture. The studying will have to increase as I get better at time management. It seems that studying is like running for me; if I get started, I'll work hard and feel better afterwards but the hardest part is getting started! That being said, I am getting better at it.

We had our first exam and I performed pretty well. To graduate, we just have to pass but I want to actually know the information now. When I was in undergrad I have to admit that I was pretty lazy - cramming for exams and staying up all night to finish the problem set that I had a week to complete. Now, I want to know this stuff cold! What a difference it is when you're doing something that you enjoy, that you feel is important.

Oh, and I am loving the OMT (osteopathic manipulative treatment) subject. We are learning how to feel differences in our patients, how to use our hands to heal them. Touch is a powerful thing and I think more doctors need to be taught how to touch their patients, how to use their hands to diagnose and even heal them.

Ok - enough rambling into space - back to the books!

1st week in the books

My first week consisted of three days of orientation and two of actual classes. It was pretty light but nerve-racking nonetheless. As a returning student, I'm finding that it's difficult to click with my fellow students. Their conversations about dating, video games and music are difficult to participate in because I'm not up on the latest trends in these areas. A couple of my classmates were talking about Rock Band, which I have never played and I started laughing because the last video game I played was probably Galaga, on an actual console where you put quarters in it. It is amazing to be around these students, they are a talented bunch. There are musicians, artists, writers, even a mathematician. I feel so privileged to be among them!

We dove right into dissection on the first day of class. There are five students to a cadaver so I collected four others by holding up my hand saying "we need three more here..." and counting down as one joined the group. I wanted to make the first cut but didn't want to be pushy or greedy so I suggested we do rock-paper-scissors for it. The first round every one of us chose scissors! We all broke into laughter and everyone in lab looked over at us - oops! After two more rounds, I got the honor of making the first incision. I was so jazzed to be the first! I am in awe of how resilient the human body is, how tough the skin is. Finally, I am beyond grateful for the man who chose to give his body so that I could learn hands-on about the structure and organization of the body.