When we got provisional accreditation later, we were at the old Florida High
campus at that point. We were just all hugging each other and celebrating….
We did gross anatomy in the basement at Montgomery Gym, on Landis
Green. I had taken my scuba-diving class there, so I knew the pool was there. But
I didn’t know that there were cadavers in the other room! I was familiar with the
building, but we were in that little room, and we had eight cadavers crammed
into this little room. It had a real low ceiling, no windows, no ventilation – it was
kind of creepy.
For our first Doctoring course we were across Landis Hall in some psychology
building in these crazy little rooms. I had forgotten about this – our first
experience with the one-way mirrors. We were assigned a teacher, and there were
three or four people in the group, and we’d have a standardized patient [an actor
who would feign certain medical problems]. The whole team would watch you
through the one-way mirror. They would critique you on your interviewing
skills, any bad habits you had: “You say ‘um’ a lot.” “You say ‘cool’ a lot.” “You say
‘Oh wow.’” “You’re too excited.” Or “You’re not excited enough.”
It was really important because that’s your foundation. It wasn’t really important
that you figured out the case or asked the right questions. It was more that
you build a rapport with somebody – that was important in our first year.
And then second year was when we had transitioned to the old high school,
and they had renovated those rooms. Those were groups of eight to 10, with one
teacher and a standardized patient. That was more interviewing skills, say, in
uncomfortable situations. Like the one I remember was when I was in the hot
seat with a young girl, and this girl was a very good actress. She was pretending
that she had been violated by either a family member or boyfriend, and she had
come to me. It was SO intense!
Afterwards I was just exhausted because the conversation was really powerful
about somebody physically hurting the patient. We learned what you do and
how you feel and how you respond to a patient appropriately and say the right
things.
It’s an incredible learning experience. It just almost brought you to tears
because you were in that situation and it felt so real without being with a real
patient. The value of that, being a second-year student, is just incredible. From
what I understand, a lot of medical schools wouldn’t have any patient contact
until the third year. They wouldn’t even know how to use a stethoscope….
We were very close with each other. We experienced births and we experienced
deaths: Our receptionist Dee died, someone that everybody had known
and loved. It happened sometime in our second year. We went through so much
together.
What I would say for incoming students is try to hold on to that closeness
and support for each other. When you get out into the medical field, it’s not a
cutthroat kind of atmosphere. You work together with all of your consultants. It’s
all about forming professional relationships and personal relationships with the
people that you work with.
72 | Breaking the Mold