7-19-13
So it’s now officially been one full week since I took the
MCAT exam and thanks to Ian’s foresight, I’m too busy enjoying this wonderful
trip to spend my time worrying about my score which won’t be available for
another three weeks. I had never taken any exam remotely like the MCAT in my
life. It requires a huge amount of background knowledge (think thousands of
pages of biology, organic chemistry, general chemistry, and physics). But
beyond that, it requires you to be able to integrate the physics of electrostatic
potential energy to explain the reactivity of certain compounds in chemistry.
Then, your knowledge of chemistry is required to understand the
three-dimensional structure of intra-molecular bonding within a protein which
gives the protein its all-important tertiary and quaternary structures in
biology, or why certain types of substrates can bind to the active site of
enzymes and others cannot. Oh, and how can I forget the non-superimposable
mirror images of molecules (the “left-handed” and “right-handed” enantiomers)
of organic chemistry – the difference being that in many cases one form of the
mirror-image molecule could be incredibly beneficial towards fighting disease,
while another is completely toxic. All of these subjects are thrown into many sets
of passages describing experimental procedures, requiring you to not only
recall your background knowledge that you spend months trying to learn, but to
also quickly sift through the long passages to figure out what data is
important and what isn’t. In other words, the MCAT, unlike any other test I’ve
taken in my life so far, is not a knowledge test – it requires an immense
amount of background knowledge, but it’s a test of applying that knowledge in a
variety of situations. Half of the answer to a question comes from your own
studying, the other half of the answer is embedded somewhere in the passage, or
experiment, or medical case-study that goes with a set of questions. In other
words, it’s quite impossible to do well on the exam by just relying on your
knowledge alone, and it’s equally difficult to do well by just trying to
“figure it out” from the passage alone – both are crucial.
I felt like I gave it a solid effort, so hopefully that is
reflected in my score in a month. I guess in the worst case, I’ll just retake
it in late August or early September but I have my fingers crossed I won’t need
to. I’m not expecting an amazing score, nor am I expecting to have completely
bombed … I think I’ll end up somewhere in the middle, but hopefully I’ll see a number
on the screen in a few weeks that will give me confidence in my applications to
medical schools. Only time will tell …
Just before we left town, I had an interview with Seattle
Children’s Hospital – one of the leading pediatric medical centers in the
country for an inpatient pharmacy technician position I had applied to the day
before I took the MCAT. They are the pediatric teaching hospital for the
University of Washington School of Medicine (my top choice for schools), so I
was floored when Human Resources had called me so quickly after I had applied,
and the management team in the dept. of pharmaceutical services called me just
two hours after HR did. I guess my curriculum vitae lined up pretty well for
their needs (I did work in pediatric critical care last year, and pediatric
inpatient before that as well…). During the interview I was very impressed with
the leadership that was in place. They emphasized how Seattle Children’s
follows the Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) model of development – casually
known as the “Toyota Method”. Toyota’s success worldwide has been linked to
their attention to eliminating waste at every single level and in every single
process, and has become applicable to healthcare. I found out later that
Virginia Mason Medical Center also here in Seattle was the first in the country
to apply such a method to their healthcare system. Basically, compared to
normal hospitals, the “batch fill” of medication for admitted patients is run
every two hours rather than every 12 or 24. This leads to less
dispensed-but-unused medication, less time wasted sorting through the returned
stuff, less potential for error when trying to return all the credited
medication back to their original locations, etc. Upon implementation of this
2-hour batch, they found that drug waste was pretty much eliminated, so much so
that there isn’t even really any “returning” to stock that needs to be done!
The CPI method even takes into account things such as moving auxiliary warning
stickers or pens to a particular desk to eliminate wasted time walking to the
other side of the room to use them. Absolutely incredible.
Most impressive was a huge whiteboard in the middle of the
room accounting for every single mistake that was made at any one of the
two-hour batches, as well as an account of any mistake made by the pharmacy
that was sent out to the floor, even if it didn’t lead to patient harm or even
if it was caught by pharmacy before nursing noticed. These types of pro-active
accountability measures are what gives Seattle Children’s Hospital top-notch
FROG status … voluntary reporting of any error, regardless of how minor it is.
The focus is shifted away from demonizing individuals for making mistakes
(although with the way the records are kept, you can obviously pinpoint
problems to people if necessary) and instead looks at trying to fix the system
as a whole to make the entire process less error-prone for everyone. I was
amazed by this paradigm shift – it seems so common sense, but in the real world
this is far from a day-to-day standard.
With plans to take biochemistry this upcoming fall quarter,
I had initially only applied to the Per-Diem position. However, during the
interview they asked if I was interested in an all-evenings 7 days on, 7 days
off schedule which would be considered “full time” and receive full benefits. This
would allow me to have a full-time schedule that didn’t interfere with my
afternoon class, and give me a full week off every other week! Among these
amazing benefits? Medical insurance coverage for same-sex domestic partners,
evening differential pay, and awesome incentives to use alternative modes of
transit to get to/from work. They will provide a 100% free ORCA card (transit
pass for the Seattle/Puget Sound region), will actually *pay* me to ride a bike
to work, and will even provide bikes to individuals to check out for use (yes,
you can take it home!) provided that you use it for work-related commuting at
least a few times per week. FREE BIKES and paid to ride them to work?! And, a guaranteed
ride home if my “alternative” mode of transit doesn’t work for some reason
(flat tire, buses stopped due to snow, etc). Looks like they are ahead of the
game, understanding that the healthier their own staff is, the less it will
cost them long-term in terms of lack of productivity due to increased sick
leave. The campus is gorgeous with a bamboo forest and waterfall even within
the courtyard itself. Even if I didn’t get into medical school this time
around, I wouldn’t mind continuing to work at such a great organization.
So with that great news and a dream schedule, we packed and
headed on the light rail to the airport on our way to Quebec! What I was
expecting to be a lazy summer in the northwest enjoying the beautiful hiking
and camping that is available ended up turning into a cross-continent trip to
Quebec, Vermont, New York, D.C., Richmond, and San Francisco before returning
to Seattle. For now, time to turn the French back on …
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