We started interacting with standardized patients our second week of medical school. Just simple stuff like doing interviews and getting some health history information. Definitely just easing us into it. We have to meet certain progress requirements at the end of every semester.
Just a word to the wise -- do NOT blow off the practice notes (H&P, SOAP, Progress, Discharge instructions, discharge summaries) they make you do in clinical medicine -- you will need to be able to do an admission in about 10-15 minutes, including the orders by the time you hit intern year (early in the year, maybe 30 minutes, at the end, 10-15 minutes) -- the way to do that is to practice and take feedback from your instructors -- also, when you start learning physical exam skills in Clin med -- most people used to bail on that as it was seen as wasted time since everyone had been to a doctor sometime in their life and knew WTF they were doing, right? Wrong --
In Clin Med -- take the time to read the book which offers a really simple, comprehensive way to examine each system, then go into clin med and practice those exams -- you're learning what normal sounds like since most of you have no pathology to speak of -- then have your classmate lie down on the table as if they were in a hospital bed and learn how to auscult lungs when you have to roll them onto each side, have them pretend to have a back injury so they can't be rolled and you have to slide your hand between them and the bed, etc. -- have the attending watch you and offer guidance and pointers -- get good now so when you hit 3rd year, you're a stud --
There's a real temptation to focus on board prep and blow off the practical education of being a physician figuring you'll learn it 3rd year on rotations -- that's plainly stupid and a waste of a valuable resource in the form of the attending who will answer your questions recognizing that you don't know jack -- Horse of a different color when you're standing there on wards as an intern and don't know jack -- bad juju
Same thing with musculoskeletal stuff -- There's a nutbag FM guy, Dr. Mann, who used to come in to teach Ortho exams -- he talks a mile a minute and has a Robin Williams type of personality -- great guy and good instructor -- pay attention and practice the exams -- get an ortho book and go over the exams while he's doing them and get a system down -- I can do a pretty comprehensive knee exam in about a minute but I trained myself to do it the same way every time and I write it in the note the same way every time with the exception of my findings ---
Also, don't forget Dr. Clearfield and Dr. Boone (seems odd to say that, he was there when I was there but I always liked Aaron) from the OMM department -- those guys are good and can teach you a lot....
