The Big "5"?

Congratulations to the American University of Antigua for finally getting California approval! AUA is the 5th Caribbean med school that now has approval of all 50 U.S. states. The other 4 being of course, AUC, St. George's, Ross, and Saba. Please note that AUA and Saba still do not have federal loans.

The campus is beautiful, to see it click here.

Incoming students looking for housing, help my friend out and check this listing

Two Bedroom Apartment at Lagoon View -- AVAILABLE

Two minute walk from AUC. Lagoon View is one of the closest buildings to campus. The building has a generator. This apartment is perfect for two people. There is a washer in the unit and the dryer is shared with residents on the same floor. This is perfect housing for students. The unit is equipped with a full kitchen, a glass dining room table, living room furniture, and two refrigerators. Each roommate can store their own food in their own fridges in the kitchen. Both bedrooms have their own bathrooms.

Each bedroom has a desk, bed, and full closet.

The price is $1200 per person.

If you are interested, please contact: tenphanthok@aucmed.edu

Looking for Off Campus Housing?

AUC updates the following link every couple of months. Last update was June 27th

http://www.aucmed.edu/pdf/Current-Housing-Availability.pdf

Birds eye view of all the residences available to AUC students. I'm over at Cupecoy Beach Club in the top left corner.

Also a great place to live and not shown in this picture is Porto Cupecoy!! A lot of my classmates are living there/in the process of moving there now. It's a 3 minutes drive from AUC (yes, you need a car or at least a bike to comfortably go back and forth). Get one or two other roommates and you can live there for $1100-$1200 a month. 

Related articles

• The Annoyance of searching for off campus housing culminating in pure joy for finding one kick-ass apartment (medschoolcaribstyle.com)
• Cupecoy Beach Club (medschoolcaribstyle.com)

The Atlantis World Casino

The Atlantis World Casino is a place you'll probably spend a decent amount of time in as an AUC student. It's the closest attraction to the school; only a one minute walk from the main building. On weekends students will come here to gamble or watch some of their sports teams, and during the week, most people come for some food or drinks at the local restaurants. The two most popular restaurants are Sugar Cane for standard blah-American fare and Thai Savanh which serves up an Americanized form of Thai.

The Italian place called Bella Napoli should be more popular I think. I've never had anything there except for the pizza, but damn is that pizza good. It's thin-crust, wood-grilled and sooooo much better than Pizza Dan's, but I get the feeling that nobody at AUC really knows about Bella Napoli. It's on the side of the casino facing the main road and no one is ever there. The pricing of the pizza may be part of problem, however. I think last time I spent $16 for a pie that I devoured in 5 minutes. If I was that owner, I'd definitely cater to the AUC students with some student discounts.  That's where I'm getting my dinner from tonight, maybe I'll pass on my thoughts if I see him. (EDIT: Just got my pizza and there is an AUC discount! $3 off if you are a student.... I still paid $15 though.)

For the best Italian food in the Caribbean, you should definitely try out La Gondola for a special occasion or anything really because it is that good. Before my parents arrived to the island, my mom does this thing where she likes researching for all the best restaurants for one of our trips and then compiles it all into a list. So for the two weeks they were here, we went out to every lunch and dinner spot she had on her list. La Gondola was definitely the family favorite. We even went back a second time the night before my parents left. I haven't been able to get over that fact that I have lived 10 seconds across the street from La Gondola all these months and I only discovered last week that it's probably the best restaurant on the island. Sure we went to the French side to Marigot and Grand Case, but I was not excited about my food over there. I can't help but feel most of those restaurants are riding on the curtails of former glory and they charge an arm and leg because they are all Frenchy and they can. They are located in prime, tourist trap location, and the owners/chefs just grow complacent, I guess. Or maybe it's just because it's the off season? Either way, not worth the money, which by the way is in Euros.  

There is one exception actually. My second favorite restaurant on my foodie adventure was La Villa in Grand Case. The food was delicious, the place was beautiful, the service attentive, anddddd if you pay in cash, 1 Dollar= 1 Euro! They have this amazing deal where you can order any appetizer, entree, and dessert from the menu for $49.  Seeing how most of the other restaurants in Grand Case have a $49 price tag for one entree, this 3-course meal is actually pretty fair. My family and I loved all our food. We even ended up getting free champagne. When the waitress was serving us our drinks, my dad took a picture with his ridiculously huge camera and intense flash and blinded our waitress who then dropped a glass of champagne on my brother's girlfriend. Nice.  La Villa is rated number one in Grand Case on Trip Advisor. If you guys want to see what other people say about it, click here.

Intro to Clinical Medicine: Auscultation Sites of the Heart

Check out my sweet name tag

My free afternoons have been taken from me! But unlike Biostats and anatomy lab, I actually enjoy the two hours spent in ICM 2(Intro to Clinical Medicine) each day. We started class last week, but from this point on, all AUC students have to take ICM 3, 4, 5, and 6 for the duration of Basic Sciences on the island. The purpose of the course is to prepare students for the clinical years of medical school where we will be expected to know how to properly record a medical and family history and perform a full physical exam on a patient.

ICM 2 includes both lecture and small groups. The lectures were a bit boring since they mainly covered professionalism, communication skills, and cultural competency, but luckily we finished all the lectures last Thursday. From Monday to Thursday for the next two weeks,  my classmates and I will be meeting in our "small groups". Each group is headed by one doctor and is comprised of 12 or so students. We spend the first hour of class practicing our interview skills on some "patients." These patients are pretty much always spouses from the Spouse Organization on campus. They get paid to learn a few characters and act them out for each student. It's somewhat awkward trying to interact with a "patient" when everyone in the room is just watching you and analyzing everything you do wrong. It's all just a little too contrived for me and I just feel like I'm a terrible, terrible actor struggling to remember my lines and cues.  Nothing is coming naturally during my interviews. Not my introductions, not when I ask questions, not even when I smile. In real life, I like to think I'm not socially inept and that I actually interact pretty well with patients in an office/hospital setting, but this is ICM world. I need to get over my stage fright sometime.

The second hour of ICM is spent learning how to conduct the various exams for the eyes, head, neck, etc  and how to use some of our medical instruments like the stethoscope, ophthalmoscope, and sphygmomanometer (blood pressure cuff/pump).  We did some blood pressure work yesterday and learned how to do an eye exam today, but I'm going to quickly go back to last week where we learned where and how to listen for the heart. We went to Harvey lab and all students were given a wireless stethoscope linked to the lecturer's stethoscope. Wherever he put his diaphragm/bell on the fake, large, rubbery body that is Harvey, we could also here the heart beat our ear pieces.  The following diagram quickly summarizes the main points for heart auscultation. Click on the diagram to enlarge.

note: "ICS" stands for intercostal space
Systole/Diastole= Lub/Dub= Ventricular Contraction/Ventricular Relaxation

Physiological Heart Sounds:
S1= Closure of AV valves (Tricuspid and Mitral)
S2= Closure of Semilunar valves (Aortic and Pulmonary)
S3= Filling of Ventricle (normal in young people and the physically fit)

Pathological Heart Sounds:
S3= Filling of Ventricle (abnormal in people over 40 years of age)
S4= "Atrial Kick" during diastole (if heard, always pathological)

I'm already tired of writing. I'll probably do a couple more posts on ICM at a later date. 

Related articles

• ICM Physical Examination Equipment (caribbeanmedstudent.com)