MY EXPERIENCES WITH GENERAL CELLULAR AND NEURAL CELLULAR PATHOLOGY IN A CASE BASED BLENDED LEARNING ECOSYSTEM'S CBBLE

Hello,

I am Rohith Jampani, a medical student from INDIA. I'll be sharing a couple of my most fascinating experiences during my postings in general medicine. 
All my experiences were only possible because of the guidance I received from our HOD sir and my mentors. They have encouraged me in their unique way, sharing examples and taught me to pursue my dreams so I would like to express my gratitude to them.

My first ever encounter with a patient was when I was posted in the general medicine department and all of us were supposed to take up a patient's history and diagnose by ourselves. So, I happened to go to the AMC ward to take a patient's history. All of a sudden, I see a woman bawling her eyes out and obviously I could not stand for. I really wanted to get all the help she wanted with the knowledge I had so I tried to calm her down and take down a proper history.

The art of history taking involves the ability to recognize the interrelationship between the details of the medical history and the patient's personal history. Even though she was not in the right state to answer any of my questions, she did her best because she thought I could help her and that made me feel overwhelmed. 

She was a very strong woman as she has had an amputation a year back and hysterectomy a year ago too. The husband was very accurate with the details of the surgeries and helped me with the history taking a little.

It was my first time ever, to examine a patient. I took consent and started my examination. Her per abdomen examination had positive findings of tenderness in the epigastric region which made me think of pancreatitis or GERD instantly. This was the only positive finding I had and was almost clue less so I begin to ask her the symptoms I know of pancreatitis and GERD. 

She then tells me that the pain radiates to her back and reduces sometimes while laying down. There was no relation to any intake of food, vomiting and other gastric symptoms so it led me to believe that it was pancreatitis. I asked my mentor and the provisional diagnosis turned out to be pancreatitis. It made me satisfied that I was close to her diagnosis but little did i know that she had been misdiagnosed by me until and after I saw her endoscopy findings. I learnt a lot after that. History taking is as important as the laboratory findings. 

This made me question my ability of a proper history taking, per abdomen examination, where I lacked. From this onwards, I have been constantly motivated to better than the previous day and it made me impelling. 

Here is the blog link of this case: 

https://rohithjampanirollno185.blogspot.com/2023/03/60-year-old-female-with-pain-vomiting.html

The true method of knowledge is experiment. The more I learn, The self confidence I will have. 
In closing, I want to remind you to never stop learning, and never forget that medicine is an art practiced by doctors. We bring to people not only technology and training, but also our humanity and caring. 
Thank you!