So, I've been a busy girl...spent last week in the field, in the lab, and in front of my computer. This week I picked up lots of shifts at my 2 part-time jobs...and so I'm working 30 hours PLUS trying to work on getting my figures done up, while reading papers. It's been an emotional roller-coaster ride, let me tell you.
One of my part-time jobs is being a standardized-patient for the Medical Faculty at the Bannatyne campus. Essentially, I'm an actress...learning different patient roles for the different departments within Medicine. The department hires people like me (standardized patients)who learn a role, with specific answers and then we are the medical students' "exam". Last month, I got to portray a promiscuous, uber-sexual 25-year-old patient, who flaunted her sexual history to her pharmacist, while filling out her prescription. I was nervous going into the exam, but then realized that the pharmacy students were more nervous than I was! It ended up being a ton of fun, because, as you know, I'm a fairly conservative person, and it was great to be out of my comfort zone!
Today I had training for the neonatal (pre-term babies) department, where I am a mother receiving bad news about her baby, or a diagnosis that I don't want to hear (even though I've had suspicions about it). [I'm sorry that I can't write more about it, the role is confidential.] We practiced with real doctors today and it's so exciting! Some of them deliver the news nicely, while others are real a**-holes, blaming the mother (me) for the diagnosis on my infant. It is also an opportunity for me to learn how much doctors across Canada are trained, and that even practicing doctors undergo exams on a fairly regular basis.
Bonus: we get to wear fat suits because we just had our babies...how fun is that!?
