Welcome! My name is Irene and I’m a second year Biomed Student at PCOM. Over the course of the next year you’ll find posts from second years such as myself who are completing the second half of the Master’s program, having chosen a concentration via one of the following tracks - Forensics Medicine, Research, and Organization Leadership. We’ll be documenting, writing, and sharing our experiences while offering tidbits of advice and wisdom, and perhaps, even a bit of humor/sanity to you folks out there who have decided to go down the harrowing, but very rewarding path of a career in health care.
First and foremost, let me take a moment to introduce myself. Just a little background information, I graduated from Cornell University with a B.A. in Psychology and worked in two labs, one studying the effects of automaticity on implicit attitudes and beliefs, and the other, exploring cognitive attentional deficits from prenatal cocaine exposure using the rat model. After undergrad I moved to Philadelphia to complete my premed requirements at Penn and worked as an Academic Associate in the ER at CHOP and then worked for a local women’s health non profit for a bit before applying to PCOM’s Biomed program, and am now in the midst of completing the second year via the Forensics Medicine track with the final destination of medical school in mind.
(If you have stumbled upon this blog in pursuit of information regarding the first year’s coursework and experiences, please click on the entries in the archive on the right hand side of the page. You’ll find a great deal of insight, information, and support there!)
Ok, whew, moving on. After completing the first year of the program, you’ll have the option to pursue one of three different tracks. I decided to choose Forensics Medicine because I was interested in pathology and wanted to build on the foundational knowledge I had gathered from the first year of the program (and because I might have watched one too many episodes of HOUSE, CSI, and Dexter).
The forensics track begins with taking FMED 500, which is a four credit course that starts in the fall. It meets one weekend per month for four consecutive months, Friday to Sunday, 8 AM to 4 PM. Though this turbo style of class might sound not as heavy in coursework as say Histology or IP, heed my words, take this class seriously, do not underestimate the rigorousness of this course. Study a little bit every day. There is a significant amount of material to get through and leaving it one week before the exam will not cut it. FMED 500 covers general pathology of nearly every system (kidneys, respiratory, cardio, liver, etc). At this point, having taken histology and IP, you should have a pretty good understanding of the disease process – initial onset, progress, and morphology – and this will give you a leg up in path. Oh, obviously, on the plus side of having classes only once a month, this will leave you a nice chunk of time to pursue other things, e.g. a work study/volunteer position in another faculty member’s lab, shadowing, finishing up applications, getting more involved in one of PCOM’s many clubs and activities, and perhaps even having a bit of a social life. J
Taking pathology has given me a more well-rounded, comprehensive view of understanding the etiology and progression of disease, and has helped me especially to begin to think like a clinician. Things are beginning to make more sense this year, and I find myself thinking more along the lines of “What are the symptoms that my patient of a specific demographic will present with? What are the hallmarks of the disease? How can I use them to compare & contrast and eliminate them from other differential diagnoses?” Getting in this mode of thinking has been empowering and motivating and makes me feel like all the hard work I put in, in acquiring the foundational knowledge, has been worth it in helping me to really understand and begin to think like a physician. I’m looking forward to phase II, FMED 501, where we incorporate more of the forensics aspects of medicine, and will keep you posted on what I learn. Please don’t hesitate to email me at irenepa@pcom.edu if you have any additional questions!
