Through the Eyes of a D.O.

This week we had James Aston speak to us. He is a fourth year student at PCOM, or the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. He provided some great insight about the whole D.O. way of medicine and also discussed what it is like to go the military route for med school. Mr. Aston discussed how D.O.s are trained not just in traditional medicine but also in the "manipulative" part of medicine, and in a lot of cases have more at their disposal when practicing then an allopathic trained physician. He emphasized that going D.O. vs M.D. is really up to the individuals preference and that you can have great success in either program.

One great example he gave about osteopathic treatment was that of using this technique in patients who have some type of infection in their body. To speed up the healing process, a D.O. can open up the patients lymphatic pathways through a manipulative procedure (which is all hands on and non-invasive) to allow the white blood cells to get to the area of infection faster and clean it up. He provided a few more examples that were very interesting as well.

We want to thank Mr. Aston for taking time out of his busy schedule and speaking to our club. He also gave us his contact information in case anybody wanted to ask him questions about D.O. training or the military experience through and after med school. His email is jbaJSA@gmail.com.

Next week we will have a primary care physician DR. Mark Baxter, MD speaking to our club. Hope to see you all there!

SPRING SEMESTER

Our new meeting time is Tues at 12:30 in room LL130. Starting January 11 with social activity. We hope everyone is enjoying their Christmas break!

The Home Stretch

As this semester winds to an end, we wish everyone the best. Thanks to everyone that has participated last week in the suturing workshop. Dr. Chung gave a great presentation and had some great tips on how to improve our technique.

Yesterday, Dr. Trask gave us some tips on writing our personal statements for our applications. She told us to start early and to make a list of all our activities and achievements. Decided what attributes or topics that you wish to display to medical schools. This is very important because readers must want to continue reading and be interesting enough that they will want to interview you.

Good luck with finals and have a happy holidays!

PA, ENT, and pigs feet

AMSA at Weber State University has had some great meetings lately.

We had a physician's assistant from McKay-Dee Hospital come and speak to us about the how physicians and PAs work together. Also, she explained about who PAs were, their pros and cons, and compared them with other healthcare workers like nurse practitioners.

Some highlights from her message included that PAs in her office had great autonomy and while this varies from clinic to clinic it really depends on the doctor they work under and state laws. Some of the pros of being a PA include the ability to move around between specialties without needing extensive training (i.g. residencies). She also mentioned that she gets to focus more on the patients that she sees and doesn't have to worry about running the clinic or paying malpractice. However, she said that if she was in our shoes, as students, she would recommend us go all the way to medical school.

Also, Dr. Schuller an ENT doctor from the community spoke to us about getting in to medical school and the life of a ENT doctor. Dr. Schuller spent three years on the admissions board at Dartmouth where he went to medical school. He told us that all of us are unique and that we need to show that to medical schools, because when they go through a hundreds of applications they need something to remember us by. He also told us that coming from a small school like Weber State we are at a disadvantage and that we should rock to MCAT to displace any grade inflation due to WSU's small size.

Coming up next week we have the opportunity to learn some suturing techniques! Reps donated suturing equipment and the club is buying pigs feet from the market so that Professor Chung, M.D. can teach us some suturing techniques. It should be sweet, if you haven't signed up email us and we will see what we can do. Don't miss it this Wednesday 11-24!

APPLYING Spring or Summer 2011

If you are planning to apply Spring or Summer of 2011 and did not make it to either of the MANDATORY APPLICANT MEETINGS you will need to contact Dr. Barbara Trask or set up an appointment as soon as possible. This is the beginning of the application process - DO NOT DELAY!!!

TO SET UP APPOINTMENT CALL SUSAN: 801-626-7755

or e-mail DR. TRASK: btrask@weber.edu

GET ON TOP OF THIS BEFORE IT
SLIPS OUT FROM UNDER YOU!

FREE PRACTICE MCAT!!!

This Saturday Kaplan is offering a FREE practice MCAT on Weber State's campus. It will begin at 10:00am and is located in Lind Lecture 130. 

Click here to register for the exam!

What it takes to be an ER physician

This last week we had the opportunity to hear from Dr. Croft. He is a local ER physician that gave us some pointers on the current changes in medicine and some advice on how to be a good physician. Dr. Croft was very optimistic about the use of technology in medicine, and worried about the increased debt load of new physician and the increase in malpractice suits. He also gave us some pros and cons about emergency medicine, noting that you must look at yourself and understand what you are good at to see if you are a good fit.

Finally, he gave some advice to anyone looking into medicine. 1) Must enjoy working with people, hard work, and be smart enough to handle the challenges of medicine. 2) He recommended getting a background in finance, business and accounting. 3) Be opened minded, with respect to your ultimate specialty choice. 4) Don't put off happiness for some arbitrary date. In other words, those that are happy now in life will be happy in the future. There is always something on the horizon, and we should not put off happiness till after we finish our undergraduate, medical school, residency, or whatever. Be happy now.