Ten in Ten

It's been ten days of third-year, semester two, Winter classes. What's happened in those ten days? Quite a bit! School and life have been busy, but I am loving it. It's the last time that I can be a student in a classroom setting so I am trying to soak it up!

Ten things that have happened in the last ten days of school:

1) I attended the most gourmet potluck of my life after class to celebrate my friend C's birthday. There weren't any boring veggie trays or chips + dip at this potluck! Instead there was homemade gourmet salsa, sushi, edamame, sweet potato falafels, pomegranate salad, lentil dahl, roasted chicken, veggie stew, gluten-free chocolate chip cookies, and a blueberry-banana cake. 

2) I learned how to draw blood from a vein. Phlebotomies are cool! 

3) I started volunteering at a raw chocolate company in Toronto. They 'pay' their volunteers in chocolate. How awesome is that? Their vanilla chocolate is divine. 

4) I was the Scribe (i.e. note taker and case write-up compiler) in a disc herniation case in my Primary Care class. 

5) I preformed my first spinal adjustment/manipulation. I also had some done on me by my classmates. 

6) I had my first clinic shift (fun, scary, exciting, and tiring because it made for a 12+ hour day). 

7) Attended my first pediatric appointment (I need to attend one to gather information to write a paper on the experience for my Pediatrics class). 

8) Got 90% of the work done for Women's Health Week (a week of events taking place in March at CCNM; I am the primary coordinator for the week). 

9) Attended CCNM's Annual Suppliers Show at which I got to talk to some of my favorite supplement companies. 

10) Helped a friend by helping out at the business class I took way back in first year. Just sitting in on one of these classes got my all fired-up for creating my own future practice! 

Becca's Blogging

We had a whole class on blogging last week in my Practice Management (aka Business) class. Ever since, I've felt the need to re-visit my reasons for blogging (note: I've talked my reasons for blogging once before here).

An quick overview of Becca's blogging:

- I don't blog for money, to gain readership, or to attract patients. I blog for me. Just trying to document my time at CCNM (the classes and the chaos, the food and the fun). I started the blog also as a means of communicating with family and friends. Did you know that my grandfather is my blog's number one fan? He never misses a post!

- I don't follow blogging "rules". Apparently I break almost all the "good blogging rules" ha, ha. Things like: always include a picture, post at the same time daily, post a picture of yourself on the blog, promote your posts on Facebook and Twitter, only post on a white background with black font, etc. 

- I don't spend hours editing and formatting my posts. They are quick and dirty!  Sorry for the spelling errors and super sloppy writing at times. I'm not an author, just a student trying to quickly document the cool things I am doing and learning about. 

- Despite not being a 'proper blog', my blog actually has quite a large (and totally unintended readership), for which I am thankful. In fact, have more views per day than one of my classmates who tries really hard to get readers. So for whatever reason you read Navigating Naturopathy, thanks and I hope you continue to read as I work towards my ND! 

I took this picture in a computer repair store. What a fitting image for a blogging med student. 

Solve, Not Sell (+ NPLEX Results).

In my Practice Management (aka Business) class, my professor says that as doctors, we won't be trying to "sell" ourselves to future patients, instead we'll be trying to "solve" their problems. Solve, not sell. Our job is to connect with members of the community and try to solve their problems rather than sell them on why naturopathic medicine is for them. Our goal is to share and educate (hopefully future) patients on the benefits naturopathic medicine and how it can help to solve their problems, and then the (hopefully future) patient will then sell the idea to themselves and book an appointment to see you. We just need to plant the wellness seed in their head and then they must decide whether or not they want to make an appointment and start their health journey!

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I thought I would take the time to let my readers know that I passed my board exam, NPLEX 1 (written on August 7, 2012)!  I found out the news a couple of weeks ago, but many of my classmates didn't find out until late last week, so I wanted to wait until everyone heard before spreading the news of my own results. Thanks again for following along my journey to become a Naturopathic Doctor.  With this big exam out of the way, I am well on my way (over 50%) of achieving my dream job!

Tax-Free "Food"

In my Practice Management class, we talked about taxable goods. Did you know that food is non-taxable? ...but there is a catch, because most "foods" that you would label as "food" actually don't qualify. Only real food is non-taxable. Chips, pop, candy, frozen dinners, frozen pizzas, packaged snacks, cookies, etc, are not considered to be "food" and are thus taxed.  This is an example of how eating healthy can be much cheaper that eating poorly; you don't pay tax on real food!

Non-taxable products (in Canada):

• basic groceries such as flour, sugar, spices, breads, cereals, eggs, butter, margarine, cheese, peanut butter, jam, honey, fruits, vegetables, milk, and yogurt
• prepared foods sold by an eating establishment for $4 or less
• children's clothing (including diapers)
• footwear costing $30 or less
• feminine hygiene products
• newspapers
• drugs and medicine sold under a doctor's prescription
• goods designed solely for people with physical disabilities
• vitamins and minerals. 

...and that's it.  No junk food allowed. All packaged goods are subject to taxation.

You can print out this list and take it with you next time you are grocery shopping. Try to only buy "food"; you'll save both money (tax-free!) and your health (processed-free!). 

Year 3, Semester 1, Class Review, Part 1.

It's about time that I reviewed my Year 3, Semester 1, classes! This is part 1 (five classes today, five classes tomorrow). Here we go:

Botanical Medicine 3 - Same old, same old. We're learning about 250 herbs this semester (yikes!) in the same we we've always learned about herbs (by reading monographs).  It's pretty boring.  On Wednesdays, however (we have the class twice a week), we do cases and come up with herbal formulas.  I quite like the cases because they seem so REAL. In less than a year I'll be coming up with herbal formulas for a whole variety of health concerns, so these case exercises seem really practical. (Oh, but I will soon HATE Bot Med 3 because apparently the midterm is brutal...).

Primary Care - Also known as, 'let's play doctor' class!  I find this class fascinating. We take turns being doctor, by interviewing a patient, and then performing the relevant physical exams.  Then as a group we have to diagnose the patient, do research on the diagnosis and treatment options, then write-up a full treatment plan. It's a lot of work, but fun work! This, like the Bot Med cases, is also very practical.

Men's and Women's Health - I may never meet a patient in my life who has a Chronic Bronchitis or who has Generalized Anxiety Disorder (i.e. specific conditions), but I most definitely WILL meet a male and a female patient :P  The point I am trying to make: this class is very applicable! Everyone in the class will benefit at least from 50% of the class teachings in regards to their own personal health. We have to do a research paper in this class too and my topic is a good one, so it's been enjoyable to work on.

Health Psychology 3 - We got shafted in our first and second year psychology classes. Seriously: I want my money back!  What a joke... Anywho, I am finally learning this year!  We have new-to-the-school professors and we're learning about relevant stuff, like how to assess someone with a mental disorder and the diagnostic criteria for all kinds of mental disturbances (e.g. Major Depression, Panic Attacks, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, etc).

Practice Management - Also known as business class.  Lots of number crunching and market discussions. We have a lot of guest speakers in this class too, which keeps things interesting. We have a big group project in this class that requires us to create a full business plan, which is excellent practice for when we have to make a real business plan in a very short period of time!

Third year is shaping up to be very, very different from my second-year experience.  Second-year was very depressing (pathology, microbiology, disease, etc, etc) as we learned how to diagnose, but this year is so-far quite uplifting as we learn how to treat! We're finally learning how to make people feel better and that is a wonderful feeling.  As of right now, I'm loving school again, including all of the silly assignments and group work that comes with third-year, because it's all making me very feel very excited for the real world which is just around the corner!  Day-after-day, and little-by-little, I'm feeling more like a doctor-to-be :)

The Mini Accountant.

Image source here.

This semester, I am taking Practice Management ...aka business class. It's is an interesting and exciting class; especially when I get to day dream about my future practice as an ND!  However, this class is also challenging because it tests my brain in new ways. Marketing, accounting, incorporation, contracts...? These are all very new concepts for me.

This past week, we had a mini accounting lesson.  We learned about debits and credits for accounting purposes. It's soooo hard to forget about debit cards and credit cards (the two ways in which I had already heard these terms), because in the accounting world, a debit and a credit are very different from Interact and Visa!

In class we had an exercise on Income Statements and Balance Sheets too.  Looks like I am becoming a jack of all trades... doctor, baker, accountant...