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Looking forward to the last class
Posted 8:50 PM, October 27, 2008, by badowskiThis coming Wednesday will be our last class. While I am looking forward to the components of this last class, the "mysterious" extended appendages exercise and the therapeutic ride, I am a bit sad that this will be our last day on the ranch.
Looking back, I feel that I will take away many lessons from Horses in Medicine. I have learned to take time to observe, to read the subtle cues that horses (and people) exhibit. From the horse leading exercise, I gained a little bit of insight about myself. I learned that I tend to be gentle and "nice," a fault when the occasion calls for a more assertive approach to accomplish a task. From the tarp exercise, I have learned to place take into account the patient's perspective and their fears, to take into account that what may seem normal to me may be extremely scary to a patient. Lastly, from last week's hippotherapy session, I saw first-hand the clinical applications of using animals in therapy and convincing me to be open and curious about these alternative treatments.
I feel that I am taking out a renewed sense of sensitivity that I can apply to my future clinical practice, as well as insights into my own stregths and weaknesses. I hope that I can use this last class and the rest of my medical school education to build on these initial skills to become a better physician.
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Comment by: Avila at October 28, 2008 11:30 PM
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I too am looking towards our last class with the elusive combination of joy and sadness that we, in our best attempt to simplify, have come to know as nostalgia. Yet it is hard to predict at this moment, with the course still so engrained as part of my weekly ritual, what exactly I will feel most nostalgic about. Will it be the realization I had on the first day of class, while observing a group of horses, that I could so easily identify with a non-verbal creature, that I could spot my curious and aloof tendencies after watching a particular horse for only a minute? Or maybe my memory of my time at Webb Ranch will reside in flashes of sensations: the coarse texture of Dream�s hair as I ran a comb through her mane or the sound of that communal breath we all took when Josyln so beautifully lead the horse across the tarp. I guess I just can�t really be sure of how these thoughts will paint themselves�.except to say that they will be crisp and that they will be powerful.