what do you use neuroscience for?

[durty]

Second semester MI here trying to get excited to learn for my second neuro test. I thought I'd ask what y'all actually use your MI neuroscience training for in the ED? I feel like it would help motivate me if I knew how I might be using this stuff.
-durty

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[Seville]

Second semester MI here trying to get excited to learn for my second neuro test. I thought I'd ask what y'all actually use your MI neuroscience training for in the ED? I feel like it would help motivate me if I knew how I might be using this stuff.
-durty

I wish I'd mastered it back when I was an M1. You really use it when you build on it with the classes in the second year and then again in your Neuro rotation in third year.

I have done loads of neuro exams on patients in the ED who came in complaining of dizziness or with stroke-like symptoms.

Neuro is incredibly important, in my opinion.

 

[WilcoWorld]

So far this week I've used it to come up with a differential diagnosis on a patient with an afferent pupilary defect, to differentiate central vs peripheral vertigo, and to diagnose phenytoin toxicity. Most regularly I use it to determine whether radiographic findings are at all related to a patient's presenting symptoms - often they're not.

My general advice to med students, however, is not to try and determine which bits of the torrent of teaching you get in preclinicals will prove to be useful. Instead, do your best to enjoy learning for the sake of learning (I know this gets hard sometimes, but keep trying). Get excited about the beautiful elegance of the Frank-Starling curve's relation to myocardiocytes on a cellular level, for example. Neuroscience in particular contains fascinating stuff with metaphysical consequences; how strange is it to be using your frontal lobe to think about the way that your brain thinks when it thinks about thinking? It's enough to make you dizzy...in a good way.

P.S.: I like the Cursive avatar.

 

[durty]

Thanks, I appreciate the pep talk. I understand that I'm learning exactly what I want to learn and don't have to take cognates or anything like that any more; it's just such a deluge that I'm having to remind myself to pay attention and not ignore the flood by playing ps3 or something.

and thanks for noticing my avatar.
-durty

 

[Venko]

I use Neuroscience and Neurology on most of my shifts. This past week, I had a patient with ALS, two traumatic subdural hemorrhages, a cerebral tumor with cerebellar blood extension, two elderly dizzy, plenty of altered mental status, wernicke's encephalopathy, delirium tremens, two seizing patients, and I'm sure there are a few others I didn't think about...its extremely important information!