I spent the afternoon placing 2 foley catheters, an NG tube, and then a few hours practicing suturing and getting BLS-certified.
Immediately after this, our dean gathered our team together and bought us wine and pizza before our evening lecture.
My program rocks.
(I start surgery on Monday, guys! And I suck at suturing. I have suturing supplies to practice with this weekend – hopefully that will bring me up a few notches to “incompetent, but teachable.”)
(Or at the very least, maybe a step above “drugged monkey playing with string”.)
Action Potential 
Congratulations! Real patients and real bodily fluids! Enjoy the buzz while it lasts. =)
But ‘drugged monkey playing with string’ is just so much more entertaining!
Have fun with surgery! I’ve heard from others that it’s “really awesome” but they’d “never do it as a career because of the hours”.
(Also I just wanted to say I love your blog. 🙂 )
I’m going to bookmark this post and save it for later when I think “THIS CANNOT POSSIBLY BE WORTH IT”
I doubt that I’ll ever think that… but I do still have the prereqs and preclinical years ahead of me.
Reading this makes me super excited for 3rd year! Good luck with learning suture tying!
I used dental floss and a curved drawer handle to practice hand ties. Just keep repeating them while you’re watching TV or something – after about 20 reps, you’ll have it down pat.
Congratulations! I just finished reading Anthony Youn’s In Stitches; he mentions buying pigs feet and scavenging old suture materials to practice his stitching. Good luck.