Today was a day of revisiting things we should already know, but on which we likely need a refresher. We renewed our CPR certification and practiced writing patient notes after a patient interview. The former was made especially relevant as we will now be surrounding ourselves with sick people - making our chances of using CPR significantly greater than when we were in lecture halls all day.
One of the first things I noticed about our patient interview/note workshop was that everyone finally threw the VINDICATE mnemonic under the bus. It's joked that you learn everything you can from books by the end of second year and then are promptly told to forget it when you hit the wards. This is a giant exaggeration, but it was funny to me that the one mnemonic that epitomised good, misplaced educational intentions was the first to go.
VINDICATE is a system for remembering all the different areas of medicine to consider when coming up with the differential diagnosis. V stands for vascular, I stands for... one of the 4 things that the two I's in vindicate stand for. See? Not my favorite. But even though VINDICATE is the most liked system by our basic sciences faculty, there are several others that are a little more manageable. Two that were brought up today were organ systems and head to toe. Being a more visual learner, the head to toe method appeals to me: start at the top and quickly run through possible diagnoses as you make your way own the body. Simple and I don't have to remember how many I-words are in a mnemonic.
TIL: CPR loses about 10% of its success rate for every 1 minute that passes without CPR being initiated. So, if a person suddenly drops, the chance of reviving them falls to zero in about 10 minutes if no one starts CPR.
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