Life Of A PA – A Day In The Life Of A Physician Assistant|The Every Day Life Of A Physician Assistant

Day 79:

Friday September 19, 2008

Another friday…another day stating out with physiology at 8am.  Actually everything the last few lectures has been pure review for me.  Gosh I love having taken neurobiology at UGA back in the day.  Anyway, we have now moved our focus onto skeletal muscles and how they work.  Basically we are talking about how we move as humans.  How we can tell our leg or arm to move.  Pretty interesting stuff!

Next was a lecture on adronergic antagonist in pharmacology.  So far this stuff isn’t too bad, but it does seem like there is a lot of testable information.  All i seems that it might be fair same for the professor to ask old material on current test.  I guess it is all important information and we should remember everything, but wow…thats can be hard!

Next was physical assesment.  Actually our first test in this class is on Monday so we had a two hour review today.  For the most part we just went around the room and went of the online quizzes.  To fill you in, we have online quizzes due for this class.  We get two attempts to do the quizzes and are shown the correct answer after the first attempt.  Actually this is a great way to learn and see what you know and don’t know…and a good way to make an easy grade.  So we went over those quizzes.  Well, we went around the room and everyone answered one of the questions that had appeared on a quiz.  I guess the idea here was that the test is going to be like the quizzes.

After lunch we kinda ventured off track and had a lecture on the physiology of the hearing, smell and taste.  Not much to explain here, but I can say that the ear is an amazing thing!  You should check it out sometime on google.

And the last class for the day was another out of the blue lecture on pediatric emergencies.  Actually we took our test for ophthalmology yesterday, but this lecture was left over and had to do it today.
The weekend is finally here!

With all the test and studying going on the past week I have totally neglected the blog and post…but now worries.  I have typed all the days activities up and will be posting them all come friday.  Sorry for the delay and lack of info.  Study time again!

Day 78:

Thursday September 18, 2008

Started off the day with another Biostat lecture.  I think most of the people in the class are more worried about the test on ophthalmology we have this afternoon.  And i’m sure that the professor realized as well.  Actually it all started when he, the professor, asked if we had any questions about the homework.  And to no ones surprise there were none.  This was followed by the professor asking “did any of you do the homework?”  I have to say we are a very honest bunch and answered with the truth….NO.  I don’t think this sat well with the professor, but he moved on…only telling us that the first test is fast approaching and that we needed to do the homework to be ready for the test.  Things seemed fine for a time and then it seemed the professor noticed that everyone had their faces buried in books, studying for the afternoon test.  I think this was really the last straw for the professor.  He began to say that we needed to be better students and that he knew we had tons to do, but we needed to show respect and to do the work for his class as well.  With that note, we ended class.

I do believe that some of the girls went to apologize to the Biostat teacher for our actions.  I guess we will have to see how things go next week.

So after all that excitment and lunch we had our opthalmology test.  84 or so multiple choice questions and 27 or so picture questions.  Basically we had a printout of pictures of the eye and had to answer questions pertaining to the pictures.

And finally…I can relax a bit.  And start studying for the next test…come Tuesday!

Day 77:

Wednesday September 17, 2008

Another long day starting off with physiology.  We continued our talk today of the nervous system but more specially the somatic nervous system.  The somatic nervous system consists of peripheral nerve fibers that send sensory information to the central nervous system AND motor nerve fibers that project to skeletal muscle.  If you are really interested in finding out more of what we are talking about in class I have found a link that explains things in a really easy manner.

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/nsdivide.html

After physiology we went back to the PA classroom to continue our talk on adrenergic agonist.  What in the world is that??  Well if you are interested I have posted a link below so you can learn more about that too.  On a sidenote, we got some news about the pharmacology grades from our last test.  We are all receiving 4 points to our grade.  This is to make up for a few test questions that might not have been fair or worded correctly.  Hey, 4 points is 4 points…i’ll take’em any day!

http://www.uic.edu/classes/phar/phar402/katz/adragonist/sld001.htm

Next was case study for ophthalmology.  We were broken into groups of 4-5 and where handed a printout of different case studies.  Each group was assigned a case study and after a while had to tell what they thought was the diagnosis.  My groups question was actually dealing with drugs of the eyes.  At least it gives us an idea of what to expect come test time tomorrow.

After lunch we continued on with our guest lectures of the eye and had a lecture on refractive problems of the eye.  Nothing too difficult.  Just the different types of eye refractive problems…like nearsightedness, farsightedness…you know what i’m talking about.

The last lecture of the day was by another guest lecturer and it was on the different external eye disease.  He was actually a M.D. from the VA hospital and was quite interesting.  I won’t bore you with the details…plus I have to get off to studying!

Day 76:

Tuesday September 16, 2008

Sleep….its such a great thing.   And that is exactly what I got to d0 today.  My first and only class wasn’t until 10am.  That class was Biostat.  The funny thing that I didn’t realized until someone brought it up, is that we are something like 4 lectures ahead of schedule.  Hopefully that means we will get done with the class early or that we will be able to take a week off from class.  Actually I think the teacher got a little bothered by the fact that no one in the class did the homework.  There were 2 problems we were suppose to do, but it seems that no one of very few  people did it.  Ok, I take that back, I know for a fact that Rusty did the problems.  I guess we will have to see how things play out.

The rest of my day was spent studying the eyes for Thursday test.  There are going to be pictures that we have to identify on the test, so I have to make sure I go over as many pics as I can before Thursday.

Day 75:

Monday September 15, 2008

Another Monday…another day of class.  Today we started with a lecture in Anatomy on the Autonomic nervous system.  Actually we were supposed to use our “clicker” response system today, but again, it didn’t work.  I’m not sure what the problem really is, but i’m not complaining.  Instead of using the clickers we just answer the questions in as a group.  Well, it more like the professor ask a question and we raise our hands for answer A, B, C…you get the point.

After that lecture we had another lecture in pharmacology.  I’m still waiting to see what the final word is on the pharmacology test that we took last week.  I think we are all hoping for a curve of some sort or a few points.  I guess we will just have to wait and see.  Other than that we continued on with our talk about agernergic agonist.  Actuallly it seems there is another good pharmacology text book that I need to get.  Some of the other students  have it and it seems some of the test questions came from that book.  So after this post I will be ordering that book!

Next was a lecture on the nose and throat.  I don’t know how excited I am about putting my hands in other peoples mouths…but it is pretty interesting.  Actually I was never aware that there was so much to see.  Its also interesting to learn all the different techniques about paplaping the sinuses.  There is the point at which you firmly press on the sinus and times when you tap with two fingers over the sinus.  I can’t wait to practice all these stuff on my family and friends…oh how happy they will be

Next we had two lectures on the eye.  There first was about diabetic retinophy and the next was about aging the the eyes.  Its cool to note how all of our vision will decrease over time.  Have you ever seen it when someone starts holding the paper out further from them…well that is caused presbyopia.  Bascially a hardening of the lens and decrease in function of ciliary muscles of the eye.  So that is the type of stuff we went over.

Now just forcing myself to get to work and study!

Day 74:

Friday September 12, 2008

We talk another talk today on the neurological system.  Actually we are diving into the basics of how the nervous system controls different muscles.   We were actually supposed to use our “clicker” or class participation remotes today, but we didn’t.  I’m not sure what the real point to using them is.  I guess we are supposed to answer questions or do a quiz.  They look like little remotes and everytime I pull mine out I think about watching TV.

After that we had a lecture on pharmacology.  No word on the test that we took yesterday, but we dove right into adrenergic aganoist.  Oh how fun

After pharmacology, one of the second year students gave us a lecture on examining the ear.  We went through all the routine things like how to hold the instruments, how to pull the ear, what to look for…etc.  I think the coolest thing was seeing how insects can crawl into the ear!  Can’t wait to see that in a patient.

As before I won’t bore you will the details of our eye lectures, but after lunch we had a lecture on glaucoma.  And after that lecture we had a lecture on retinal disease.  If you are really interested in the details of the lectures let me know and I can tell you guys more…but I think you get the basic idea of what we did.

Day 73:

Thursday September 11, 2008

Today was the big day…the day of our first pharmacology test!

But before we could get to that we had a Biostat lecture to get through.  Actually the professor cut the lecture short because I think he realized how stressed out most of us were about the upcoming test.  To be honest I don’t think any of us minded that the class ended early…it just gave us more time to pack in last minute pharmacology information. 

After lunch it was time to take the test.  100 questions of pure pharmacology joy.  Ok, maybe not.  This is another of those test that we got to see the answer to after we were done.  I did OK.  All and all I think the test was quite difficult.  Being the first test in the class, I think it was difficult to know what to study or to fucus more on.  Now I think the whole class will have more of an idea of the types of questions.  At least I hope we will

And that wasn’t even the end to my day.  I still had to go to small groups.  My small groups leader is out of town so we had an older student run through the eye exam with us.  I have to say, I was so drained from the pharmacology test that I could barely keep my eyes open.  I know I will sleep like a baby tonight!

Day 72:

Wednesday September 10, 2008

It is hard to believe how fast the day count is approaching 100.  I guess the “hundreds” will be days to celebrate.

Started off the day with another bright and early lecture in physiology.  Today we covered synaptic transmission and neural integration.  I don’t know what more to say than that.  I feel as if I will bore you to death if I go into the details.  It seems that most people are more focused on the pharmacology test we have tomorrow, myself included.  As I have said before, luckily I have had neurobiology before so the things were are currently covering in physiology are just a review.

Next was the class we had been waiting for, Pharmacology.  Why you may ask…because we were having a review.  Well it ended up being more of a “here is what to study” type thing.  The professor ran through the test and gave us broad ideas of what the questions would cover and what we needed to focus on.  All and all I took 2 pages of “things to know” notes…so its a lot of material to cover.  More specially a lot of drugs to learn.

I was then free until 1pm.  So I spent the next few hours studying away in the library.  Usually I don’t study well in libraries…as i get distracted by every person that walks by, but it didn’t seem to bother me today!

After my long break I had ophthalmology lab.  We were broken into groups of 4-5 and have different stations we had to go through.  The first for my group was “discussion.”  This was more of a case study type thing.  We sat in a room and a PA read a situation to use involving the eye.  We talked about what we would ask in the interview and one of us had to get up and how how we would perform the physical on the eye.  The situations weren’t that hard.  For example, one was of a man who got something in his eye while cutting wood.

The next station was a run through on how to use the ophthalmoscope.  We all took turns looking into each others eyes and then we went out into the hall and test our vision by reading on the snellen chart. That is that big chart with the big E on it and all the small letters as you move down.

The next station was putting on eye patches and doing a basic dye of the eye to look for abrasions.  Both of these were new to me and weren’t that hard.  Actually it was fun to put an eye patch on a fellow student.

The last station was learning to use a Morgan lens.  Basically its a little cup you place on the eye to flush foreign object out.  One person in our group volunteered and we all got to try using it on that person.  If you are interested in what it actually looks like and how it works here is a link to check out…

http://www.morganlens.com/ppt.html

Also in that last station we flipped back each others eyelids.  This is done to check for foregin materials and remove them if present.  You have seen this before…when you were little.  There were always those kids that could grab their eyelids and flip them inside out.  Well, that is exactly what we did to each other

After all that fun we actually had another lecture in pediatric opthalmology.  Again, I won’t bore you with the details, but ill try and post some of the lectures if possible.

Day 71:

Tuesday September 9, 2008

Oh how much I love it…the feeling of sleeping late.  That feeling of fulfillment when waking up.  Not having to wake up to the alarm blaring at you; screaming that its time to get up and begin the next day of the journey…the journey to become a PA.

So I got to sleep in late today and then make my way into the first class of the day at 10am.  Biostat was a long talk about Causation.  We were actually given a two homework problems to do, but with the stress of having a pharmacology test on Thursday, I’m not sure those problems will be in the forefront of my mind.  But they will get done!

After biostat and lunch we had a lecture on eye emergencies.  The lecture was given by a Dr. Richard Goodwin and way quite interesting.  It would take just too much of my time to post all the details here, but maybe I can post the pdf files in a bit.

After the interesting talk on eye emergencies we had a talk about Lasik surgery.  Actually I find this topic very interesting.  How can you not?  Pulsing a laser into someones eye to currect their vision…how can that not be cool.  The doctor actually worked at a practice that I drive by everyday, Eye Care One.  It was really cool to see who worked there after all these years of driving by the place.

Time to hit the books for pharmacology!