Saturday 23 July 2011

So I think I've finally hit a good way to organise general study.

One of my main problems that I come across is that I want to make notes (in whatever format, but writing stuff down helps me focus on it, and it seems to make it stick better) and then I end up with about ten different ways of storing them. I have a lot of my lecture slides in course folders, and all of my notes from those lectures are in books, but then I have a bunch of extra stuff that's saved in random places where I've tried to pigeonhole it into existing folders, or written notes based on a specific textbook, etc.

I've hit upon a more question-based approach which I think might help focus my information on what's useful and relevant, where I've split vet nursing in total up into seventeen categories which hopefully cover most things I'll need to know, and has the added benefit of being separate to courses and specific books and such, so I should be able to keep each section up to date and separate, without too much blending.

So far my list of topics is:
-Anaesthetics
-Anatomy
-Avian/Reptile
-Behaviour
-Clinical/Diagnostic
-Emergency
-Geriatric Care
-Laboratory
-Medical/Intensive Care
-Paediatric Care
-Pathology
-Pharmacology
-Preventative Care/Product Knowledge
-Radiology/Imaging
-Reception/Computer Skills
-Small Animal Care
-Surgery

As far as definitions go, I'm still working on wording them exactly right because most of them are still a bit iffy in my head. The categories look like they should be reasonably easy to define though, so it's the bones of a project I intend to work on for basically my entire vet nursing career.

The way I'm planning to set things up is that within each of the above categories, there'll be a bunch of questions which I'll think up whenever I find something I'm uncertain about or wish to learn more information on, which will be under each category. That way, when I want to do some learning, I can pick a section, and have definite questions to find an answer to, like "what do the atria and ventricles of the heart appear as on an ultrasound?" "what are some abnormal heart sounds and what do they signify?", as opposed to the slightly more vague "wanting to know more about the heart". The questions will all be stuff that's relevant (like in my external clinic the other day, we had a cat with saddle thrombus that had been there a few days, and I wasn't sure what that was, so the associated question would be something like "what is a saddle thrombus, how is it formed, and how does it affect the animal physiologically?" I've since found out that it's a clot in the aorta that often forms when there's associated cardiac problems causing uneven blood flow, which breaks off and then partially or completely blocks blood flow to the hind limbs, causing paralysis and tissue death, which may or may not be able to be reversed, and if it's not reversed within a few days then it's best to euthanize before gangrene sets in. Treatment being blood thinners, fluids, and hope. This cat unfortunately didn't make it (she died really suddenly when we were trying to feed her) but she didn't really have a positive prognosis either.

It's just things like this - specific diseases and such - that we haven't been taught much about yet that I come across and feel like I don't know enough about yet. From what everyone else is telling me, a lot of it is experience and I know that seeing an animal with saddle thrombus really drove it home more than words on a page will ever be able to, but I...basically want to know everything I can cram into my head about vet nursing and animal pathology and surgery and general care, and I need to know more about emergency situations and such. Really the only thing I can't focus on yet is reception, and that's only because each clinic I go to uses a different system and I don't spend enough time on reception anywhere to need a complete how-to guide. It's something I'm confident I'll pick up on my own once I start regularly using a single system.

Overall I'm hopeful for this system of organisation, but we'll have to wait and see how it goes.

1 comment:

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