MedEx Day 8 - July 8, 2021

Today was the 8th day of MedEx. To begin today, Tier III had our 3rd Kaplan course and our first course on the topic of Biochemistry. As a Biochemistry major, I particularly enjoyed today's course. The main focus of the session was on strategies to use on this section of the MCAT, some of which I found very helpful. I think it is an interesting and good idea to always try to eliminate my choices down to two options on the MCAT to at least give me a 50-50 shot.

After this, Tier III's day consisted entirely of lectures. To begin, a Librarian from the Greenville Medical School came and spoke to us about learning how to effectively find and access high-quality medical information. She also compared and contrasted the ways physicians and patients find information (peer reviewed medical journals vs. WebMD/ Wikipedia). We did an activity where we researched a topic using PubMed in order to better learn the functionality of the system. I thought that her presentation enhanced my research/ scientific inquiry skills. Even though I have used PubMed myriad times in the past, I did not know of some of the features she mentioned. Afterwards, Dr. Griffeth, a psychiatrist at Prisma Memorial spoke to us about his experiences as a psychiatrist and as a Navy physician. I most enjoyed his discussion of the relationship between mental health and socioeconomic status. This discussion certainly enhanced my cultural competence and my responsibility to make a difference as a physician. Dr. Griffeth explained that, just like with other aspects of medicine (like has been apparent with COVID-19), socioeconomically disadvantaged patients have a much harder time obtaining access to healthcare. According to Dr. Griffeth there might be a link between the rates of mental health disease/ poverty, but there is certainly a link between severity of disease and lower socioeconomic status.

Next, Annie Anderson, a dietician with Prisma came and once again worked through how to eat healthier/ live a healthier lifestyle. She also went over general lab number values/ how to look at lab numbers. Lastly, Dr. Hudson came and spoke to Tier III about the importance/ power of research and how to form a research question. His talk also helped me to improve my critical thinking and scientific inquiry skills by learning to properly evaluate different research questions using the PICOT/ FINER methods. It is important to have a refined research question that is specific enough to yield good information.