April Hours: 12
Total Hours: 30
Caption: Kennedy, a black lab, preforming a place on a bed while a distraction cat and ferret run in the background
This month has been a crazy feeling of being almost done and almost there and also still so much to do. While we finished the NMBE the first of the month, we still had several of our elective classes to finish up. We had our elevator pitches in environmental, which was really neat to see all the social justice issues linked to health that my classmates are interested in. We had several sessions of neuropharm, which greatly increased my ability to read and understand scientific papers and endocrine pharm, where I learned what stressing about stress does. We also had several advances classes and seminar guest speakers, which continued to be really interesting. Today, I took my last exam in the graduate program. I did not finish with as big as a bang as I hoped, but I still am really proud of my performance this semester and in the program over all. During this last week of April, I started my full time job for my gap year(s), where I am working as a rehab tech in a chronic neck and back physical therapy clinic at Ochsner. I love learning about the other side of health care and the rehab and healing processes my future patients will go through. I really think it is important to have a full grasp of all aspects of healthcare to be good physicians. We need to understand the time, energy, money, and dedication patients go through besides their quick visits with us.
I also continued my service ventures. I worked 2 shifts so far in the Emergency Department of Touro. Being back has solidified my love for Emergency medicine. While I mostly clean rooms after patients leave, restock kits, give COVID tests, and occasionally help patients with other tasks, it really is fun working with all the staff and being a small part. I also get to 'shadow' the nurses and doctors, so I continue to learn and apply things from medical pharmacology. It truly is awesome watching what I learned in the classroom be applied in the clinical setting. I also love working and helping the patients, and watching the doctors put together symptoms to come up with a plan of care for patients. I also did 4 hours with USVSD, continuing to train their professional training dogs. Because of several graduations, there are only 3 dogs right now. This meant we really got to spend time working out little kinks in commands, tasks, and behaviors. My favorite is distraction training, because it generalizes all their skills and tasks that they are learning to environments that are more similar to where they will be working besides a quiet training room. We had the three cats and ferret out and about playing, while the dogs had to learn to ignore and work around them. I included a video of us introducing one of the dogs to them. As I continue raising my own service dog for this organization, it is really cool to see what he will continue to do after I finish raising and he goes into training. It is also amazing to see directly how what these dogs do mitigates peoples' disability and promotes independence. The ability to be in public as a veteran with USVSD is quite amazing in the difference between social isolation and mental health issues to being able to hold down a job, see friends and family, and continue to live the life that they want to live.
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