MedEx Day 14 - June 3, 2022

Today was the last day of the third week of MedEx. To begin today, Mr. Al spoke to our Tier regarding whether or not to take a Gap Year. In this lecture, Mr. Al discussed taking a Gap Year by Chance vs a Gap Year by Choice. Mr. Al recommended that everyone consider taking a Gap Year, to stave off burn out, continue to develop our portfolios, and grow into the best versions of ourselves. I enjoyed this lecture, but I still plan to apply to medical school this cycle & plan to continue to develop my strategies for rest throughout the year.

Afterwards, we did a personality activity, where we discussed four different personality types' strengths & weaknesses. My personality type, lion, is very decisive and wants to take the lead, but sometimes tends to not fully take into account everyone's thoughts/ opinions for the sake of getting the job done. Once this was over, we split into groups of various different personality types in order to act out a scene from an image (as portrayed in the pictures above). Part of the challenge of this activity was that in certain scenes, we could not talk to each other, or some members of the group had to have their eyes closed so that others would take on different team roles. This activity was great at demonstrating the diversity of personality types and how each member of the team has to be able to play different roles (leader, encourager, etc.). Although this was meant to be a silly activity, this demonstrated how the healthcare world truly works as it is a collaborative environment that takes care of patients.

To conclude the day, the SC Office of Rural Health talked about some of the opportunities for physicians who want to go in primary care/ work in rural areas. Then, the M2 students gave an IPM (integrated practice of medicine) where our Tier had to go through and think about the patient's various comorbidities, social history, history of present illness, etc. to determine what factors might play a part in her diagnosis/ then diagnose her. As a future healthcare professional, this is a skill that will have to be honed and developed, as patients/ their diseases are rarely presented like the textbook. The M2s also taught us how to perform a basic physical exam on each other.