Man! I Feel Like a Woman (19/30)

Greenlawn Cemetery, a great place to relax if I get home early

      Yet another month has come and gone, and with it has come the end of my psych rotation. Going into the psych rotation I hadn't expected that I'd be sad to leave it, but I was. I had a great preceptor who taught me so much and who helped me grow as a practitioner, and I was surrounded by so many other healthcare practitioners who were just as friendly, encouraging and helpful. It was also such a great thing to see actual differences in the lives of the patients. The best part might have been finally seeing an improvement in one of my patients who was in the ward for my entire rotation, and who didn't respond to treatment for quite some time. When the patient finally said that they were starting to feel better (something we'd been seeing, but the patient hadn't previously admitted), and when the patient's family members mentioned that they thought that my time with the patient had made a difference, my heart felt full to bursting. It's one of the sad things about leaving the rotation that I cannot know how things ended for that patient, but I hope and pray that they continued to improve and were discharged soon after I left.
     Now that I'm done with my psych rotation, as well as my first End Of Rotation Exam (EORE) and PACKRAT (Physician Assistant Clinical Knowledge Rating and Assessment Tool), I've moved on to rotation #2: Women's Health. Although country is one of my least favorite genres of music, I have to admit that I did love some Shania Twain when I was younger and thinking about describing my new rotation kept making me think of her song "Man! I Feel Like a Woman" (plus it seemed a bit more appropriate than "Lovely Ladies" from Les Miserables) so for anyone who wants a bit of mood music while they read this post, here you go: 

     Women's Health has been quite fun so far. As an introvert, it can be a bit difficult for me to adjust to meeting new people every five weeks, and it can take about a week before I really start feeling comfortable, but for this rotation I'm paired with another girl from my class, so it's nice to have a friendly and familiar face with me. Our preceptor for this rotation also likes to pimp us with questions more than my preceptor in the psych rotation, so it's been good to be able to brainstorm with someone else, and somehow not knowing the answer to a question feels less horrible when the other person is just as clueless. Not that we're okay with being clueless. Oh no. My fellow student and I try to spend our time between patients and at home look up any questions, and often try to look at the patient list a day ahead of time so we can study up on pertinent issues ahead of time. We still get stumped frequently, and getting asked questions still makes me nervous, but at least we've started to answer questions correctly, sometimes to our preceptor's surprise. Plus, we've also realized that, as nerve wracking as it can be to not know the answers, our preceptor often cares more that we are thinking through the questions, pushing ourselves to learn more, and to answer with confidence than that we actually know the answers right away.

This isn't quite related to my rotation, but I found this
girl at the beach to be adorable.

     I think there might have been some people in my program who questioned the necessity of a required rotation in Women's Health, but I am so thankful for it. I'm also not simply thankful because I am a woman and thus the things I'm learning seem particularly relevant to me. The truth is that it has become apparent to me that there is widespread ignorance of women's health issues, even among women. For one example, it seems like most post-menopausal women I've seen thus far have some form of urinary incontinence or prolapse or both, yet these are not issues commonly talked about. Both in this rotation and in my life in general, I've also found that many women, young and old, are fairly ignorant of their own anatomy. I'm not sure if this is simply because male genitalia are talked about more in public, but whatever the reason it does women a disservice as they know neither how to describe their problems, what causes them, or how to prevent or treat them. Even trying to explain how to perform Kegel exercises resulted in at least one woman becoming uncomfortable and deciding to simply have surgery instead, despite the fact that Kegel exercises are simple, non-invasive, and decently effective for her condition. Though I'm a woman who's trained as a healthcare professional and covered women's health in school, I'm still struck by how much I've already learned on this rotation and yet how much I feel I still need to learn. Whether in the office or the operating room, there's something new every day. I'm excited to keep learning for the remaining three weeks I have here, and to be able to share this knowledge. In fact, I wish I could write more about this rotation and some of the things I've already learned and done, but I'm tired and I have to fit in some studying for tomorrow's patients before bed, so I'll have to save those things for my next post. 

I don't often have time to go exploring, but Salem really is quite lovely, even on cloudy days.