WILTIMS #11: Stethoscopes and scalpels

After a brutally didactic lecture day yesterday, we reveled in a practical-heavy schedule today. We had a fairly straightforward dissection of the muscles covering the ribcage. The most interesting part of it was the copious use of blunt dissection (prodding, prying, spreading and ripping with your gloved hand). It's a very odd feeling having your hand entirely enveloped by cadaverous tissue - in this case, feeling the contours of the ribs and intercostal spaces while the pectoralis major muscle presses on the back of your hand like a glove. Next week, we crack the ribcage!

Part two of the day was our first practical clinical section and we broke out our stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs for the first time. This class is going to be interestingly intimate as the term progresses. Today we were just taking vitals on each other (or at least trying too) but next week we will be doing the cardiac exam in our mixed gendered groups and the women have been asked to wear sports bras. One of my roommate's groups only has one girl, so is everyone going to need to examine her? Who will she examine to train on the female body? Interesting.

Lastly, we had an entertaining new instructor for our anatomy lecture today. He is a practicing general surgeon with experience in cardiology. It was a very different perspective from the PhDs and internal medicine physicians that had been teaching us so far. Every few minutes we got another example of surgical technique that we were promptly told to forget until third year.

TIL: If the CT scanner breaks and you need to diagnose a probable aortic dissection, you can do an endoscopic ultrasound of the esophagus to look at the descending aorta.