Med School Has Ruined TV And Movies For Me

Week 11 of medical school was a busy one...the material that we covered wasn't that difficult, but the additional extracurricular activities that I participated in made it far more tortuous than it needed to be. On Monday night, we had our last game of the intramural basketball season in which team "Hoops!...I Did It Again" came out victorious. It was a much needed confidence booster (since the two previous games resulted in last-second losses) for going into the first round of playoffs, which took place on Friday. Once again, we won and now await our opponents that we will play on Monday. Who knew medical school intramural basketball would be so competitive? Not me, that's for sure.

On Tuesday, I had a blood pressure lab where I was officially taught how to take a patient's blood pressure using my stethoscope and, my favorite instrument, the sphygmomanometer (BP meter). It's a fun word. It's the little things in medical school that keep you going. After becoming an expert in taking blood pressure, the following day I had my second simulation. This time, however, it wasn't as action packed. We used a modified version of SimMan (this time with no legs) to listen to heart sounds. It's scary how real these dummies look; during respiration, his chest went up and down; you could see his jugular veins pulsating; and you could palpate his apical pulse. Each of the students in my group all used a stethoscope that functioned to project whatever sound that was being heard through the facilitators stethoscope (so we could all hear the exact same thing as the facilitator). That's some pretty cool technology if you ask me. Anyway, we learned how to palpate all four regions of the heart valves (aortic, pulmonary, tricuspid, and mitral) along with listening for S1-S4 heart sounds, as well as diastolic/systolic murmurs. A bunch of gibberish...I know, but it's what actually occurs at pretty much every doctor's appointment that you go to. Important stuff.

The very next day, Thursday, I had lab where we dissected the internal heart. Now, if you have never held a human heart in your hands, it's quite a spectacular feeling. After learning every minor detail about the development of the structure and vasculature of the heart, it is a nice reward to be able to actually hold the real thing and appreciate all of its components. Admittedly, my favorite part was rinsing all of the dried-clotted blood out of the four chambers of the heart. It sort of spoils your appetite though...

So here I am at the end of the weekend (filled with studying the cardiovascular system), feeling pretty good about myself and my understanding of the material. But before I go, I wanted to enlighten you with some interesting information that I learned over this last week. On Friday, during our pharmacology lecture, we learned about a drug commonly used to treat heart failure called Digitalis. Now, Digitalis is a positive inotropic drug that increases the contractility of the heart during periods of unstable heart failure; however, if given to someone in toxic doses that is not experiencing heart failure, it will induce cardiac arrhythmia and eventually put the person into cardiac arrest. If you have ever seen the movie Casino Royale, they depict James Bond being (and accurately, I might add) poisoned with Digitalis and going into cardiac arrest. Here's the scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yNntwSjOwo

Unfortunately, the accuracy stops with his heart beat. Fun fact: you can't restart a person's heart using a defibrillator after they have flatlined. A person's heart has its own electrical conducting cells that maintain the heart beat; external electrical impulse can only regulate the speed at which the heart beats...not create the heart beat itself...that's impossible. Defibrillators are used to reset the heart rate when a person is having irregular heart rhythms (ex. atrial/ventricular fibrillation). So yes, in all of the medical shows, movies, and even James Bond flicks, the patient would not be brought back to life using a defibrillator (they would use CPR!!!). Sorry if I ruined all those nail-biting moments where you aren't sure if the person is going to live or not because they flatlined! Just trying to spread the wealth of knowledge here. Moral of the story: always know the person making your Grey Goose Martini...shaken, not stirred...

Happy March Madness everyone!