Wil:
I'm quite interested in joining the Matagouri club. It's an association/organisation/thing which promotes and encourages health professionals moving into rural practice because we all know the lack of health professionals in rural areas. They do things like visit rural towns and schools to give presentations and demonstrations to students. Essentially, we're opening their eyes to opportunities in the health professions and hope they'll persue an idea we throw at them. I think it'll be a good area to extend myself even though i'm not particularly fond of living in rural areas because I do love the big city, but I think the disparity of health care availability between urban and rural areas is one of the more trivial issues (but still important) that we can solve compared to other health service discrepencies (such as disparities of health between ethnic groups/SES groups). It's a good first step for me in thoroughly exploring the health care system and its accessibility from those who need it.
Speaking of accessibility of health care, it's one of the themes we've been learning in our 'New Zealand Health System' module in our 263 paper (Pharmacy Practice). Growing up in a relatively financially stable family, health care accessibility and availability was never really an issue for me. So when I was studying about the difficulties low socioeconomic status (SES) families have with obtaining health care in New Zealand I wasn't able to completely relate, however, I was able to sympathise.
It wasn't until I did my community placement in Auckland that I was exposed first hand to these issues that my lecturer talked about. Northcote itself has quite a large population of low SES families and during my placement I observed a considerable number of patients who would first ask the pharmacist for the full price of their prescription before putting it in to be processed. After being told the price, you could see the patients trying to decide in their head whether or not their prescription was absolutely necessary to their health in order to avoid "unnecessary" spending. On one occassion we had someone opting for only 2 out of the 3 medications they were prescribed because they simply couldn't afford to pay for all three.
I know there are things such as Community Services Cards which help patients with paying for medications, but in these cases I wasn't sure what the circumstances were.
After observing these incidents it really did get me thinking about how some people have it unfortunately hard. It makes me more appreciative of my own living situations and the benefits I have when I require health care.
This reminds me of an article I had to read which described the state of health care in the US. There are medical centres in the US which are run by voluntary doctors and offer free health care. However, because the medical centres are not-for-profit their resources are limited, much more so than your average medical practice. Undoubtedly, these medical centres get swamped with people who need health care but can't afford it because health care in US is so expensive. Basically, if you don't have health insurance then you either fork out hundreds for health services or don't get it at all. Health insurance premiums are in their hundreds anyway. So in all cases, people with lower incomes lose out.
Back to the article, so people come from far and wide to visit these medical centres hoping to get a free appointment. Because the medical centre can only see such a limited number of people the only fair way of deciding who gets access to health services is via a raffle-like process. Patients are given a number and the centre randomly picks out numbers. If your number is chosen then you get a free appointment with a doctor. All the others miss out.
The fact that it has come to this stage, where the availability of health care for patients is based literally entirely on luck, in this day and age and in a developed country such as the US is such an immense step backwards.
When I finally become a pharmacist, I think I will be most happy to have patients being able to freely walk into my pharmacy and ask for health information without having to make an appointment or pay for a consultation.
Saturday, 31 July 2010
A-pack-a-day habit...
Wil:
I've resorted to my pack-a-day habit (almost). What i'm talking about are crackers. I basically eat no proper meal during the day, but instead snack on crackers throughout the day. As a budding health professional, it's almost hypocritical of me to be living this sort of under-nutritious lifestyle but seriously, cooking takes an unnecessary large amount of time out of my day. Also, the state of our kitchen due to my somewhat unharmonious flatmates tends to discourage me from setting foot in there.
As with everyone else, I'm finding it much more harder to get stuck into my work this semester compared to the previous semester. The enthusiasm I obtained earlier in the year from the "omg i'm finally studying pharmacy - my dream career (almost..)" has finally started to wear off and now i'm just here staring at hundreds of antibiotics, the concepts of micromeritics (study of small particles), and weighing out 20 capsules and their shells individually in order to test their quality and uniformity of mass.
Anyway, where i'm going with this is that it's now taking me ages to get one lecture done. It doesn't help that I'm procrastinating every 2nd minute.
Ball is coming up. Theme is Chicago, as you are aware off. Not going to do anything for it. I'm just going to dress like a normal person going to a ball. Nothing fancy.
Ooh i have something else to talk about. But i'll start that in a new post.
I've resorted to my pack-a-day habit (almost). What i'm talking about are crackers. I basically eat no proper meal during the day, but instead snack on crackers throughout the day. As a budding health professional, it's almost hypocritical of me to be living this sort of under-nutritious lifestyle but seriously, cooking takes an unnecessary large amount of time out of my day. Also, the state of our kitchen due to my somewhat unharmonious flatmates tends to discourage me from setting foot in there.
As with everyone else, I'm finding it much more harder to get stuck into my work this semester compared to the previous semester. The enthusiasm I obtained earlier in the year from the "omg i'm finally studying pharmacy - my dream career (almost..)" has finally started to wear off and now i'm just here staring at hundreds of antibiotics, the concepts of micromeritics (study of small particles), and weighing out 20 capsules and their shells individually in order to test their quality and uniformity of mass.
Anyway, where i'm going with this is that it's now taking me ages to get one lecture done. It doesn't help that I'm procrastinating every 2nd minute.
Ball is coming up. Theme is Chicago, as you are aware off. Not going to do anything for it. I'm just going to dress like a normal person going to a ball. Nothing fancy.
Ooh i have something else to talk about. But i'll start that in a new post.
Tuesday, 27 July 2010
Fancy-ful
Megs:
I am going through several fanciful affairs at the moment, albeit (thankfully? unfortunately? haha) not with males, but with these:
- Snowboarding. Pure awesome.
- The upcoming Optometry Ball - have been focusing on making the costume for about a month, and I daresay it's finished. Not going to reveal too much about what it's like - but it's been incredibly fun, preparing a GothLoli haunted marionette outfit.
- The idea of playing the accordion. It reminds me of Parisian streets, or that scene from Lady in the Tramp, or both.
- Deciding what to do for a day on a whim.
Hmm. Might put more later.
I am going through several fanciful affairs at the moment, albeit (thankfully? unfortunately? haha) not with males, but with these:
- Snowboarding. Pure awesome.
- The upcoming Optometry Ball - have been focusing on making the costume for about a month, and I daresay it's finished. Not going to reveal too much about what it's like - but it's been incredibly fun, preparing a GothLoli haunted marionette outfit.
- The idea of playing the accordion. It reminds me of Parisian streets, or that scene from Lady in the Tramp, or both.
- Deciding what to do for a day on a whim.
Hmm. Might put more later.
On Learning, and then some
Megs:
How easy it is - to tell oneself: "Alright, now I am going to sit down, and start poring over all of last semester's worth of notes for optom171A [Structure and function of the visual system]," read about 6 pages worth of lecture handouts, absorb about 2, and get distracted.
Productively, though, I made up some songs as mnemonics to help remember some of the stuff. Aren't they great? I wonder how fast a textbook would sell, if it was written not by some old guy with a million letters denoting his qualifications after his name, (eg. Dr. S. Ape Sapiens, PhD, MBCHB, S-thingPsych ABCDEFG)** - but by a [well-achieving] student who could communicate in effective slang exactly in what sort of cheeky ways we could learn/memorise/remember half the crap we're meant to know, before and after exams.
Maybe it's a terrible way to learn things, but at least (some of it) works. I still remember one I learnt last year for the paper POPHLTH111 (Epidemiology to you):
C T I E B C E C. It stood for Can Tim Isolate Everyone, Because Chris Eats Children.
And it was supposed to stand for all the things you have to consider before the implementation of health policies. I remember T stood for "Time", E stood for "Ethics", B stood for "Benefits", and one of the Cs stood for "Cost". I haven't thought about this in a year so I'll try and remember what the others stood for later.
I know of cruder mnemonics, such as the one for remembering the twelve cranial nerves.
The letters are O O O T T A F A V G V. Some of them are rude! And, "because classy sophisticates like us shouldn't stain our lips with cursing," you can look them up yourself xP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mnemonics_for_the_cranial_nerves
Hmmm I have to go, lecture in 47 minutes and I'm still at home. I'll post an update of what I've been up to in the holidays/my current interests-and-hobbies later, I guess.
**NB: I have huge respect for these people. Really. In fact had we but world enough, and time I would probably want to study a million things too. I don't know how people with a million degrees do it!
How easy it is - to tell oneself: "Alright, now I am going to sit down, and start poring over all of last semester's worth of notes for optom171A [Structure and function of the visual system]," read about 6 pages worth of lecture handouts, absorb about 2, and get distracted.
Productively, though, I made up some songs as mnemonics to help remember some of the stuff. Aren't they great? I wonder how fast a textbook would sell, if it was written not by some old guy with a million letters denoting his qualifications after his name, (eg. Dr. S. Ape Sapiens, PhD, MBCHB, S-thingPsych ABCDEFG)** - but by a [well-achieving] student who could communicate in effective slang exactly in what sort of cheeky ways we could learn/memorise/remember half the crap we're meant to know, before and after exams.
Maybe it's a terrible way to learn things, but at least (some of it) works. I still remember one I learnt last year for the paper POPHLTH111 (Epidemiology to you):
C T I E B C E C. It stood for Can Tim Isolate Everyone, Because Chris Eats Children.
And it was supposed to stand for all the things you have to consider before the implementation of health policies. I remember T stood for "Time", E stood for "Ethics", B stood for "Benefits", and one of the Cs stood for "Cost". I haven't thought about this in a year so I'll try and remember what the others stood for later.
I know of cruder mnemonics, such as the one for remembering the twelve cranial nerves.
The letters are O O O T T A F A V G V. Some of them are rude! And, "because classy sophisticates like us shouldn't stain our lips with cursing," you can look them up yourself xP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mnemonics_for_the_cranial_nerves
Hmmm I have to go, lecture in 47 minutes and I'm still at home. I'll post an update of what I've been up to in the holidays/my current interests-and-hobbies later, I guess.
**NB: I have huge respect for these people. Really. In fact had we but world enough, and time I would probably want to study a million things too. I don't know how people with a million degrees do it!
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