By Walter Wiggins, Editor, firstaidteam.com
Over the course of the next several months, the First Aid Team authors will share a series of posts covering the common things that intimidate or mystify medical students during their first year on the wards. This series will cover a range of topics, including the uncertainty surrounding your first patient presentations, the art of writing a progress note, and the nuances of navigating the varied expectations of the core rotations. We will try to get at least two perspectives on any given topic in the hopes of getting better coverage of the issues we face as medical students and also to provide you with food for thought as you approach similar situations.
We hope you’ll find many of these posts helpful. Our primary goal is to allow you learn from – and occasionally be entertained by – our mistakes. A secondary goal is to demystify the clinical patient encounter from H&P to presentation, assessment, and plan. We have no expectations that our coverage will be comprehensive and thereby obviate your need to make mistakes of your own. After all, mistakes are how we learn best when we can make improvements based on the feedback we get…or lack thereof.
