Good Morning all, I hope everyone had a killer weekend.
I did my best this weekend to make up for losing a weekend to
Boards last week. Aside from having to write a paper and answer a
few homework questions, I set the books aside and took a break from
NUHS and hung out with friends. I've said it over and over, if you
work hard, you deserve to play hard. The demands of this program
are intense and the stress builds up fast. If you don't have a few
days to blow off some steam here and there, you'll gas out before
hitting the finish line.
The view from 7 rows up on center ice at Saturday's Tampa Bay
Lightning game
where my pals and I were blowing off some steam from the
week.
This past week I was talking with some
7th Trimester Florida students at lunch (yes, I
humor them and eat lunch with them every now and again; it gives
them something to look forward to HaHa), and I was asked if I
thought we had enough adjusting time under our belts before hitting
Student Clinic.
This question was asked as we were recapping some of the points
Dr. Mark King, from the Motion Palpation Institute, made a couple
of weeks ago. Dr. King made the point that as chiropractors we
should master the trade, and part of the trade that stands out to
most is the chiropractic adjustment. True, National instills in us
the tools for becoming a primary care physician, but our patients
will almost always associate the "DC" after our names with an
adjustment. Dr. King made the point that now, as students, is when
we should master this skill, before we hit the real world and real
life expectations of patients.
So, back to my answer to the 7th Tri students'
question--yes, we get enough time! We have 2 years to practice
before patients hit our table in Student Clinic. We as students
often forget that we are not in an undergraduate program any more.
As a doctoral student, a lot of what we learn comes from the
classroom, but there's much we have to learn ourselves on our own.
Now I'm not saying to hit the streets with a portable table and
start handing out black-market adjustments. Just as we take
advantage of study groups for exams, or going to see teachers after
class to review material, we need to make time to do the same for
adjusting.
Yes, our E&M courses eventually stop, but there is ample
opportunity to practice your skills. Students should take full
advantage of the open lab times set aside each week for supervised
adjusting practice. Motion Palpation Club, every Wednesday from
1:00-2:00 p.m. (shameless plug), is also a great time to review and
hone your skills on palpation, and just get more time for some
hands-on experience. No one is going to hold your hand here and
force you to practice, and they shouldn't have to. We became
physicians to help people, and the only way to provide the best
care possible is to master the skills we're being exposed to here
at school.
OK, OK, enough lecturing for this week. I can't believe this
trimester is drawing to a close; seems as if it was a blur. I know
as these trimesters start to wind down, so do we. Do your best to
keep those heads up and make the final push to the end of the tri a
hard one. You can only get out of something, what you put in, so
put your best foot forward now, it will only pay off in the
future.
Oh, and if you find yourselves in Orlando with some time to burn
this weekend, stop by the Sheraton Orlando from 9:00 a.m. - 12:00
p.m. for one of National's information sessions on the Florida DC
program--and, you can listen to me speak around 11:25 a.m.!
Register online at /landing-pages/hotel-info-session/.
Later,
Dex