So I was wrong

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
Members don't see this ad.
VisionaryTics said:
I remember having to teach myself renal physio and countercurrent multiplication for the MCAT. I think I had only taken general bio, genetics, and cellular bio by the time I took the exam, and none had taught me any appreciable amount of physiology.

I think I nearly had a heart attack the first time I looked at the diagram of a nephron in the book and realized I had to know all that.
Click to expand...
Except General Biology does cover it (or is supposed to): http://www.slideshare.net/jayswan/ap-biology-chapter-44 (Slide 68)
 
VisionaryTics said:
Well, I think I got a B- in general biology, so maybe I'm not the best source for these things. All I remember is that we had an exam that was like 40% questions on crocodile hearts.
Click to expand...
I guess it depends on the instructor and how much they stick to the book (or not). Crocodile hearts - LOL.
 
southernIM said:
Seasons 1-3 are must watch, especially once you have some clinical experiences.

It goes downhill for a bit after that, with a uptick in quality again in seasons 7 and 8. The series finale was perfect. I do not count season 9 (scrubs 2.0) as a part of the show.
Click to expand...
Whoa...I'm this close to punching that Elliot girl for getting rid of that Shaun guy. Ugh.
 
Brain Bucket said:
1. Since when is pulm a class?
2. What's wrong with pulm? It's even more straightforward than renal!
Click to expand...

For @Arkangeloid
Always good to admit when you're wrong. Saves time.

A lot of other people already responded, but I thought pulm. was difficult by comparison to the rest of physiology.

Liked endocrine/repro>cardio>MS>renal>pulm.

That was around the order of difficulty, unsurprisingly.
Our respiratory guy was fond of asking questions on his own research.

In my opinion the difficulty of any of those depended on the teacher and the expectations (like everything else). I've only had normal physio though, no path. I still liked pulmonary more than biochem./related subjects.
 
Anastomoses said:
Whoa...I'm this close to punching that Elliot girl for getting rid of that Shaun guy. Ugh.
Click to expand...

For a sec I thought you were a lot farther than I thought you were. I remember that episode for everything except Shaun. He looks good in that episode.
 
Arkangeloid said:
I've spent a lot of time complaining on these forums about how supposedly useless my medical education was. Well, I just wanted to say that you guys were right, and I was wrong.

I'm doing research in an IM subspecialty, and I'm finding myself forced to remember tons of stuff from Anatomy, Neurology, Immunology, Genetics, and I've even had to do physical exams on some patients. I guess that the things I thought were useless ended up coming in handy.
Click to expand...

The information itself can be useful, but I think the classes themselves are more of another hoop than anything.
 
Anastomoses said:
Respiration was poorly taught at my institution but the subject itself is quite straight forward. The values, the mechanism of respiration, pulmonary tests, the very basic physics...all seemed learner-friendly.

For me, one of the more confusing portions of physiology initially was CVS. For whatever reason I had a hard time conceptualizing what comes first and affects what how in arterial pressure -vascular resistance + CO without applied pathology. And those damn CO + VR curves were sometimes like...wait, what?

And repro...jesus, that was just hard to get through. It was a battle telling myself over and over that these things could be pertinent to something one day.
Click to expand...
Funny for most people, CV is quite interesting - esp. CV Physiology. And yes Reproductive is relevant i.e. OB-Gyn where you have to do 2 months of that ****.
 
Anastomoses said:
I never said I didn't find it interesting. Not only did I enjoy CVS, I had the top score on that exam. But I thought it had more conceptually confusing things than renal or respiratory - though people complain about these two endlessly.

Repro was tough bc when my brain isn't convinced something is valuable, i have to fight for retention.
Click to expand...
Reproduction is valuable - at least for the continuation of the human race.
I'm surprised that you find certain aspects of CV physiology confusing. Any action seems to make sense when you reason it out (i.e. the response to hemorrhage)
SrSKAy0eaiuMvMRn238Cdw.png
 
You know what ate up an entire semester? endocrinology. Greenspan was supposed to make it easy, but that man takes no prisoners.
 
Psai said:
Endocrinology is basically A tells B to go. B tells C to go. Eventually C tells A to stop.
Click to expand...
And F and T mitigate C's effect on the cell; and C leads to the increased release of I which counteracts C but is required for C to work to some degree, which is important in pathology mainly involving X.

Coolest thing about endocrine was learning about somatomedin c and how the pygmies!
 
Anastomoses said:
And F and T mitigate C's effect on the cell; and C leads to the increased release of I which counteracts C but is required for C to work to some degree, which is important in pathology mainly involving X.

Coolest thing about endocrine was learning about somatomedin c and how the pygmies!
Click to expand...

Well yeah if you're going to go into detail but some people require a simplification due to an inability to grasp basic concepts
 
Psai said:
Well yeah if you're going to go into detail but some people require a simplification due to an inability to grasp basic concepts
Click to expand...
You really should make up your mind. If you want to start **** with me, don't go running to the mods after and report my posts, like you did last time.

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk
 
endocrinology is messed up because the specialists have discovered that hormones are weird substances that will have opposite actions depending on concentrations and receptors.
Basic endocrinology, hypothalamus, pituitary, thyroid, pancreas, adrenal glands. Is pretty straight forward, if you dont think too much about it.
 
Kahreek said:
endocrinology is messed up because the specialists have discovered that hormones are weird substances that will have opposite actions depending on concentrations and receptors.
Basic endocrinology, hypothalamus, pituitary, thyroid, pancreas, adrenal glands. Is pretty straight forward, if you dont think too much about it.
Click to expand...
everything in the world is straightforward if you don't think too much about it. In a real active human body, it's all interacting and intercepting --> complicated. This isn't undergrad endocrine anymore, people.
 
notbobtrustme said:
well, for Step 1, it's basically 70% of the story.

And for me, that's all that matters. Unless you plan on doing hardcore endo research, knowing all the nitty gritty doesn't mean dick for patient care.
Click to expand...
I tend to not do things by halves.
 
Anastomoses said:
If you can't discuss and evaluate theoretical interactions and have no desire to hone such things in time, to me that's the equivalent of a medical plumber. Maybe that's a little over the top.

Actually, how well does a surgeon need to know endocrine? at all? just curious.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a future in IM for you
 
you will have to know plenty about endocrine if you plan to do (para)thyroid, adrenal and pancreas cases as a surgeon.
 
Anastomoses said:
everything in the world is straightforward if you don't think too much about it. In a real active human body, it's all interacting and intercepting --> complicated. This isn't undergrad endocrine anymore, people.
Click to expand...
let's not be pedantic, renal physiology, pulm and cv is more challenging to understand than endocrinology basics, in which for all need to know is what negative feedback is.
 
Anastomoses said:
If you can't discuss and evaluate theoretical interactions and have no desire to hone such things in time, to me that's the equivalent of a medical plumber. Maybe that's a little over the top.

Actually, how well does a surgeon need to know endocrine? at all? just curious.
Click to expand...

There's no point in learning it. You can learn all the enzymes in the periplasm of a gram negative bacteria and design theoretical antibiotics, but that still doesn't mean dick for the patient in front of you. Likewise, knowing the 4 different types of estrogen receptors can make for an indepth Grand Rounds discussion but in the end, nothing changes for the patients. The folks who care about this **** are 10-50 years away from making viable drug targets and after that, it takes like a week to get up to speed on the physiology of those pathways for the average clinician.

In the end, we are just looking for ways to justify all the crap we learned for Step 1 and for the most part, none of it really matters. Does knowing that GHRH acts via cAMP do anything for the patient suffering from acromegaly? Or that GH is a non-receptor tyrosine kinase pathway while all the growth factors are receptor tyrosine kinases? Unless you are in pharma research, no, it doesn't really matter.
 
notbobtrustme said:
There's no point in learning it. You can learn all the enzymes in the periplasm of a gram negative bacteria and design theoretical antibiotics, but that still doesn't mean dick for the patient in front of you. Likewise, knowing the 4 different types of estrogen receptors can make for an indepth Grand Rounds discussion but in the end, nothing changes for the patients. The folks who care about this **** are 10-50 years away from making viable drug targets and after that, it takes like a week to get up to speed on the physiology of those pathways for the average clinician.

In the end, we are just looking for ways to justify all the crap we learned for Step 1 and for the most part, none of it really matters. Does knowing that GHRH acts via cAMP do anything for the patient suffering from acromegaly? Or that GH is a non-receptor tyrosine kinase pathway while all the growth factors are receptor tyrosine kinases? Unless you are in pharma research, no, it doesn't really matter.
Click to expand...

Gimme about 4 years to get back to you on this.
 
notbobtrustme said:
There's no point in learning it. You can learn all the enzymes in the periplasm of a gram negative bacteria and design theoretical antibiotics, but that still doesn't mean dick for the patient in front of you. Likewise, knowing the 4 different types of estrogen receptors can make for an indepth Grand Rounds discussion but in the end, nothing changes for the patients. The folks who care about this **** are 10-50 years away from making viable drug targets and after that, it takes like a week to get up to speed on the physiology of those pathways for the average clinician.

In the end, we are just looking for ways to justify all the crap we learned for Step 1 and for the most part, none of it really matters. Does knowing that GHRH acts via cAMP do anything for the patient suffering from acromegaly? Or that GH is a non-receptor tyrosine kinase pathway while all the growth factors are receptor tyrosine kinases? Unless you are in pharma research, no, it doesn't really matter.
Click to expand...
A lot of academic medicine and medical school is an intellectual masturbatory exercise. Part of the reason it's bc they have no idea what field you're going into so it's easier just to throw everything at you. What's funny is that in medical school the intellectual part gets emphasized so much more than the clinical part, that it's no wonder at the end of 4 years, MDs are unable to practice out on their own, unlike say Dentists, Pharmacists, PAs, NPs, etc. We've convinced the public that the MD is useless without residency, but an NP or PA is perfectly fine and it's ok to increase their scope of practice.

Until recently, the govt. gave medicine deference to physicians being providers of medicine. Now that the govt. is looking to find more providers for the masses at cheaper cost, and cut healthcare costs, they've bypassed medicine and vaulted up PAs and NPs, who don't have to do a formal residency and can hop between specialties, although I have no idea how easy this is.
 
VisionaryTics said:
I remember having to teach myself renal physio and countercurrent multiplication for the MCAT. I think I had only taken general bio, genetics, and cellular bio by the time I took the exam, and none had taught me any appreciable amount of physiology.

I think I nearly had a heart attack the first time I looked at the diagram of a nephron in the book and realized I had to know all that.
Click to expand...

I did as well. Let's just say it paid off. Now if I had only known the basics of dialysis.

Good on Ark for admitting he was wrong. Just try to keep an open mind about everything you're learning and everything you have an opportunity to learn. You never know when it might help a patient. Even if you feel that it's terrible and you hate it, it could lead to you finding something that you really enjoy. For instance, I HATED Ob/Gyn, but since I was interested in my patients and learning everything about them, I followed one to IR for a procedure. Guess what I want to do for a career...?
 
Anastomoses said:
Seems like IM gets repetitive fast and interesting cases get handed off?
Click to expand...

Two words: Infectious Disease. When you're on the wards and your team has worked everything up and there's no answer, and the attending is just saying, "I dunno?" ID gets called.

It doesn't matter what's actually wrong with the patient, if they're complicated, ID gets called.

Weird bug or drug combinations, ID gets called.

Extremely sick ICU patients with FUO, ID gets called.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Mamapa2
Signal home program after doing not so great on Sub-I?
Replies
16
Views
2K
voxveritatisetlucis
V
A
  • Locked
I got a 215 on Step 2. I was applying for psychiatry and IM. Should I just apply to FM and give up.
Replies
17
Views
4K
GoSpursGo
GoSpursGo
C
Why is the NBME test taking software so ****ty?
Replies
2
Views
605
voxveritatisetlucis
V
C
SO wants Pathology
Replies
13
Views
2K
LunaOri
LunaOri
T
  • Locked
I was dismissed and got into a new school, Pt. 2
Replies
10
Views
3K
GoSpursGo
GoSpursGo
Top