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So as I have said before I'm always amazed when I find out that people read my blog.  The last comment said that they wanted me to post more often it's just that I don't want to become one of those people who posts all the time but doesn't really post anything of worth.  Well I have some stuff to talk about:

So I just finished our infectious diseases block on friday.  It was a three week long block and it was pretty good.  I am interested in infectious diseases and I can definitely see how it would be very useful to my future occupation.  Almost everyone in an ICU develops an infection especially the ones who are ventilated.  Anyway, the block was pretty good.  The lectures weren't so bad and almost every day we did ward rounds for about two hours and I saw a variety of diseases that maybe I wouldn't have seen in America.  

In order for us to get our credit for the block and then take the oral exam we had to have near perfect attendance and we had to pass a written exam.  As always when I hear the words "written exam" here I cringe in fear because every really bad experience I have had here has been associated with a written exam.  I really don't think that they know how to write exams here.  Well there were a few copies of some previous written exams floating around and I got my hands on it about three days before the written.  I studied it as best as I could and took the exam on friday.  Out of 36 students I was one of two people who failed.  This doesn't really surprise me.  I seem to always be that guy who fails the written exams here.  I waited around till everyone was gone and I went over my exam with the teacher.  I was one question short of passing and many of the questions had questionable answers.  The teacher didn't even seem to know what the answers were he quite often said that he would have picked another answer or multiple answers.  The questions were very open to interpretation.  After we had been through the test there was in fact one question that we both felt I was right on and the teacher said that it was obvious I knew enough about infectious diseases to move forward and take the oral exam.  I do get mad with all of these stupid written exams at my school, but in this case I was glad that my teacher could see that the test was imperfect and he could evalutate me on a more individual level.  I thanked him for that.  He told me that the year before the foreign students had all gotten nearly perfect scores on the exam and for that reason they wrote a new exam for us this year.  He said that the exam that was written this year was done in haste and that it needed some revision.

So now I sit here at home with about eleven days to study for the oral exam in infectious diseases.  There is once again too much material and I have a faint idea of what is important.  I have seen a decent amount of the diseases we are responsible for in the clinics, but there are many things I didn't see in the clinic that I am responsible for knowing and reading Harrison's Internal Medicine although it is the bible of medicine seems a little bit too distracting.  I like having a definitive reference to study from but I am feeling like a dog chasing after my tail while studying.  I am inundated with facts and just not sure what is of the utmost importance.  As for right now I'm going to risk infection with Listeria and go downstairs to the store for some cream cheese.