studentdrtobe

26 is pretty young. Suck it up and go the MD route -- it offers the highest level of training in whatever field you end up in, hands down. The average age of matriculation in med school is a little over 24, so you won't really be that much older than...

Agreed.

This whole scenario reeks of unprofessionalism. I'm with the crowd that would have waited till leaving the room before discussing patient management rather than attempting to make the physician look like and idiot and laughing at her (wow!) in front ...

Thanks for the concern, netglow. I appreciate it. I'm not asking for sympathy or anything. However, I'm not worried about the future either. No matter what, I'll always be able to find a job. Pretty easily. The worst thing that'll happen to me, as a ...

Why don't you focus on getting quality training instead of being worried about how quickly you can get through it? There are no shortcuts to developing into a good clinician.

Agreed. That's a huge reason why many of us in medicine have also preferred to hire PAs rather than NPs. Their curriculum is pretty solid! Plus, it's standardized! So we have a pretty good idea of what we're getting when we hire a PA. Full disclosur...

If you can't take the 1-2 minutes to use the washroom, you're extremely, extremely bad at time management. That's no one's fault but your own. Heck, even in the middle of very busy overnight calls, I've found the 2 minutes it takes to use the washroo...

Not really for those reasons. Trust me, no physician is "fearful" of midlevel incursion. We still know we have the highest level of training in our fields, by far. It's mostly the bad associations with online degrees. When someone says they got a deg...

+1. Best post of the thread!

Again, I don't really see what the big deal here is. If I was your physician, I wouldn't give out a referral either. Especially if you call me and say you need a referral to get some steroids. That's my license on the line; in the off-chance that you...

Yea, no. This may have been true a few decades ago, but certainly isn't true anymore. Are there still a lot of nerds who make it to med school? Absolutely. You have to be smart and, more importantly, have a strong work ethic in order to survive the d...

Why would the physician risk a potential lawsuit in case you turned out to be wrong? I refuse to give anyone a referral just because they ask if I don't physically assess them myself. The physician did the absolute right thing here, especially given ...

I already gave you the answer to your question. If you want more detailed information, feel free to utilize Google or a pharmacology reference book or do a lit search on PubMed. Yea, I'm going to go ahead and trust my basic science knowledge and cl...

There is a reason we do alternating doses. It helps in keeping the therapeutic dosage more constant (ie. less fluctuation in blood levels of the drug) and keeps the anticoagulation effect more constant. This involves taking into consideration both th...

Chances are that it was actually explained and the patient just forgot afterward. This is exceedingly common in the clinic. Heck, even for simple things like what time of the day to take statins, I've had to explain to the same patients multiple time...

It's where residents present articles and dissect them. Ex. the results of a large, potentially practice-changing clinical trial are published. A resident presents this data, along with a thorough background (which includes past clinical trials, retr...

Actually, that's completely wrong. We "go back to the classroom" throughout residency training and beyond. During residency, we have mandatory conferences, grand rounds, journal clubs, and weekly didactics. Some residencies even have an entire day of...

I'm not DocsWifey, but no, pH isn't the only measurement you look at when trying to figure out compensation. You also have to take into account the HCO3- and pCO2 levels, along with the rest of the clinical picture (including anion gap, etc). There a...

Use a systematic, step-wise approach to acid-base physiology: 1) What's the pH? If it's below 7.35, it's acidosis. If it's above 7.45, it alkalosis. Now, you've established whether the patient is within normal limits, acidotic, or alkalotic. Simple s...

Very eloquently put! The last sentence seems especially true. With this in mind, it would be a better idea to focus on improving the curriculum rather than opening more schools and looking to primarily produce more graduates.

Are you sure about that? Admittedly, I don't know as much about billing (since we don't really get any formal education on that issue), but I was under the impression that it's illegal to bill for something a student did. The practitioner has to see ...

Yea, that was the point I was getting at. LOL! No. Just because you have an RN background and are an NP student absolutely DOES NOT make you equivalent to a resident or fellow! Extensive bedside experience as a nurse =/= extensive experience formu...

Forgot to mention one thing. That's really, really scary that your schools don't offer organized clinical training for you guys! Seems like graduates will have a broad range of training, even within a single institution, if they have to fend for them...

That's not true actually. Med students are not preceptored (if that's a word) by non-physicians. During our pre-clinical years, we are taught by PhDs and MDs/DOs and during our clinical years, we're almost exclusively taught by physicians only. Excep...

A tip for the future: Please have all issues regarding a patient ready when you call us instead of making multiple calls. It really does make things so much easier and, for residents who're on call and maybe trying to catch an hour nap when things qu...