Transition Week

As you might guess from the title, this week we are working on our transition from the didactic year to our clinical year.  The week in and of itself is an interesting concept because it seems as if it's the week to teach us stuff that doesn't readily fit into other areas of our education.  But perhaps it is just a week to help us realize how far we have come and what we have learned over the past year such that in six short days, when we first set foot upon the wards, we will approach our patients with at least a little bit of confidence in our fledgling knowledge and skills.

During the didactic year we had such courses as Basic Clinical Skills, Pathophysiology, Adult Medicine, Emergency Medicine, Maternal & Child Health, the ever important Behavioral Medicine to name just a few.  Transition week is the week when we take an overview of some topics that we either covered too briefly, didn't cover at all, or that are incredibly important to being at least a little bit functional as students on the wards.  Yesterday we took another overview of laboratory medicine and reviewed the multitude of labs that might be ordered to aid in diagnosis or treatment of our patients.  Today we reviewed Medicare's requirements for billing and coding of visits.  There are many other topics to come including one last practice session so we can once again review our physical exams.

At the same time as we are doing all of these little tasks, we are realizing that we can look at a sheet listing all of the possible laboratory tests that might be ordered and have an idea of what each test is for, what the normal values for a result should be, and what abnormal values reflect.  Our lecturers are reinforcing that we have come a long way, that we have learned much, and that next week when we begin to learn from preceptors (instead of textbooks and lecture notes) we will be able to communicate intelligibly about the patients we will see and understand the things that we will be taught.


It's still intimidating beyond what I initially expected.  But along with nervousness and a little trepidation is a fount of excitement about next Monday.  I really can't wait.