The Medical Thread

The masseter muscle tensing, perhaps?

Masseter's in the cheek. Probably the temporalis.

Got a pointer to a clear diagram? My google-fu failed me horribly when I went looking.

A little hard to post links from my phone, but the Wikipedia articles for the above muscles should show you their positions.

edited 19th Feb '13 7:29:21 PM by Pyrite

Thanks. That led me to what I think it is — the sphenomandibularis [1]

edited 19th Feb '13 7:47:23 PM by Madrugada

Start of the new year, so course themes for this term!

• Scenario 1: HIV/AIDS.
• Scenario 2: influenza.
• Scenario 3: tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases.
• Clinical: respiratory examination and history.
• Focuses: immunology, infectious disease, pharmacokinetics, asthma, physiology and anatomy of the respiratory system, public health (ew), research ethics.

What's so gross about public health?

It's a system-based approach? Certainly different from our local syllabus.

(HIV is a whopper of a topic on it's own. Good luck with that.)

If "public health" is anything like our equivalent, it's a helluva lot of biostatistics. And to put it bluntly, the average medical student didn't join medical school to do math.

edited 6th Mar '13 8:49:39 PM by Pyrite

How do you guys do it?

^^^In practice, public health means that one spends a lot of time memorising statistics, graphs and government guidelines. It's deathly boring, even though the subject itself can be interesting.

^^The integration approach is odd for Australian universities too. I think most still use the approach of learning all your histo, anatomy, biochem, then lots of pathology, physiology and diagnosis/treatment, then clinical practice. I don't know how sensible my uni's approach is; I suspect they just want to be special.

edited 6th Mar '13 9:13:04 PM by Yuanchosaan

Well, it's subject-based and our lectures are spread out across the various years. I can't remember the exact details, but for example, we study Pathology across three years and the final exam is in Year 4. Public Health's final exam is in Year 3, as is Microbiology's (I think). The only exams in the final year are the the Medical / Surgical summative exams (but I assume that's the same for most courses.)

I like the idea of system-based learning, actually. The pieces fall together a lot more easily.

edited 6th Mar '13 9:19:02 PM by Pyrite

Does anybody go to university to do maths? Except, of course, the maths students?

Hey Yuanchosaan, what uni do you go to? Just out of curiosity.

^I actually really enjoy maths, and considered studying it at uni as a back-up option. Statistics makes everyone cry, though - even people studying actuaries.

I'll PM you my university.

If anything they would hate maths more.

Oh okay, for a second I thought you were hatin on the concept of national health care

edited 6th Mar '13 9:43:21 PM by joeyjojo

Oh no, I'm all for public healthcare.

The integrated approach is certainly a lot more interesting in early years, and you get to see how each subject is relevant to the clinical picture. We also start clinical placements a lot earlier - term 2 of the first year. On the other hand, I feel that my foundational knowledge of anatomy, histology and cell biology is rather poor, which hampers understanding in the first few years.

And to put it bluntly, the average medical student didn't join medical school to do math.

I actually thought that you need to do a lot of math in anything medical related.

By volume, yes, but it's mostly arithmetic. Statistics are usually the exception.

It's usually just "here's a formula, fill in the numbers" style maths.

And damn, are there a helluva lotta formulas. (Formulae. Whatever.) You look for metabolic acidosis, then you use Winter's Formula to determine if the change is appropriate, then you calculate the anion gap, then you calculate the delta ratio to see whether or not there's something else going on...

edited 25th Mar '13 5:00:17 AM by Pyrite

So. Much. F Ing. Paperwork.

I do remember my mom (she's a pharmacology professor) saying that medicine is a lot about formulas. I hate formulas and, well, anything math-related. For the most of time.

And, you're doing Psychology? Ooops. Statistical juggling (both quantitative and qualitative) is part of the package. People-Sciences: fluff-by-numbers is our thing.

edited 25th Mar '13 8:38:08 AM by Euodiachloris

Luckily enough, it's not my main major. Also, while I dislike math I am not bad at it, so I think I can deal with it. I think.

So, I thought maybe some of you might be amused by this recent quote from one of my lecturers.

"When you're trying to correct behavioural problems, you don't reach for the drugs. Or, well, sometimes you do, but they're YOUR drugs. *the class laughs*. I'm serious. You ever dealt with a feather plucking galah? You will need rum."

I don't get the last part.