Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Preferred names and e-mail addresses followup. Listserv updates. Reported a problem with the door code for one of our computer labs to the lab admin. Chatted with Cindy. Anti-spam interface troubleshooting. Quick lunch: sandwich from the cafeteria. Helped break down tables and set up chairs in Millberry Union Gym for the first ever Inter-Professional Day at UCSF which means that they take all 500ish of the first-year students from all our schools and put them in one room for 2 hours of discussion and interaction. They've never done this before, and when I learned of it I thought it was a really great idea. The goal was to encourage them to understand that medical service providers—doctors, nurses, dentists, and pharmacists—all need to work together to ensure patient safety. After helping set up, I stayed for about the first 30 minutes mostly because I had heard that all four deans were to participate in a skit and I wanted to see them out of character for those few minutes. I liked the skit, but I didn't stick around long enough to determine how students responded—I had too much else to do. I hope the deans succeeded in their goal. However, it seemed obvious to me that these new students, only weeks into professional school, had a severe disconnect with the deans who have had collectively dozens of years of experience seeing problems in their industries and working to provide resolutions. It was clear that the deans had an urgent message to deliver, but it was received by mostly blank but attentive faces and a handful of students who weren't paying attention at all—they were checking e-mail or on the web on their laptops, which I thought was incredibly disrespectful. (I did see one head nodding knowingly during Dean Dracup's speech, though.) These students probably have very little understanding of how complicated patient care really is, and this event only scratched the surface but nonetheless it seems to be a step in the right direction. If this one goes well, it might be good to repeat this for each class year at least once a year and get them to work more closely in interdisciplinary groups on various activities to more closely simulate the experiences the deans want them to have or create once they graduate. Picked up a snack at the convenience store: 250 milliliter san pellegrino ($1.20), 4 ounces of kettle chips lightly salted baked ($2.89). Back to the office. Updated and distributed the students spreadsheet. Dinner at home with Patrick, Phil, Danny, Drew, and Quyen. Patrick cooked a delicious Cuban meal using an advanced copy of a cookbook which he got for free from work. Avocado salad, yellow rice, Jorge's chicken in garlic sauce. The chicken dish didn't turn out the way Patrick had expected, but it was still delicious. The cookbook is called Celebrate Cuban, 100 Great Recipes for Cuban Entertaining by Three Guys from Miami. I had had a headache all day and into the night, and I've also been having headaches more frequently since orientation last week. Phil, who is a doctor, asked me where my headache was, and I said, truthfully but half-jokingly, "In my head!" to which he sarcastically replied, "What? You don't ever get the butt headache?" He says I'm staring at the computer screen too much and that I need to take more frequent breaks. I have indeed been ignoring my Workrave warnings simply because there is so much work to do, so perhaps he's right. After PDDQ left, I took a shower and then went right to bed.