Overall Clinical Correlations turned out to be a tough course for me to go through, mostly because I had extreme anxiety during presentations. During the first semester I struggled with assignments and had a constant fear of missing important information on the topics assigned. Another big contributor to my anxiety was the thought of not finishing my presentation within the allowed time. As the semesters went by I felt more confident about the material I was presenting and started to relax more during the presentations. This was because I began to use sources like up to date, Current Medical Diagnosis & Treatment 2018, CDC, AAFP, Cochrane library, and a few others, which allowed me to be to more confident about my presentations. I will definitely use these going forward in practice.
One skill I picked up during the course was to be able to extract the most important information from existing data. During one of the classes Professor Lopez explained to me that I was good at finding information on a topic, but it was too much information, and I would not be able to recall it in practice. I agreed with her on this and I redirected my focus from finding information on a topic, to finding the most important points on the topic, which could be remembered for practice. As I started to do this I realized I came to class with less material to cover, which now required less memorization and took less time to present it was so much better. One thing I still need to work on is the amount of time it takes me to organize my thoughts and information on a topic, I plan to keep working on this during rotations.
This course not only helped us with our skills on presenting and collecting information, but also helped us get a taste of the type of diverse patient population we will encounter in practice. I found it to be extremely helpful since we as primary care providers will be exposed to all types of patients, and need to be culturally competent to address their individual complaint and concerns. I plan on keeping an open mind during patient encounters and will continue to build upon the knowledge we have gained from this course.
