APAMSA National Conference Weekend!

Hola amigos

This weekend was the APAMSA(Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association) National Conference weekend and it was hosted in Philadelphia! My buddy Vinhtastic Trang drove his ass over from VCU and came to visit for an action packed weekend of.....!!.... lectures and learning.... haha and also some fun. The national conference brought members from APAMSA chapters across the country to Philly in order to share what each chapter has done philanthropy-wise, what their future goals are, and other ways to coordinate inter-school community service projects. It was also a good way to meet other medical students from across the country that you probably wouldn't have the chance to meet otherwise.

There were several very good speakers and workshops that we attended. The first was an endotracheal intubation workshop where a doctor from the Navy(who happened to be a temple med graduate, awesome!) used her mannequin to teach us how to properly intubate a patient using a Macintosh blade i think it's called. You pretty much need to stick that blue thing in the dude's hand into a person's mouth, push forward on the back of the tongue to protrude the tongue out. This allows you to see inside the back of the patient's throat, where you need to place the tube into the trachea(not the esophagus otherwise you'll kill the patient), pump up the little balloon to keep it in place, and then administer breaths. Granted it was a mannequin but it was still an interesting procedure to witness and I got to try it out too without too much trouble.

Another workshop we went to was a little more disturbing at first, but it was actually the coolest one i've seen yet since ive never seen anything like it. The mannequin arms have red dye "blood" attached to the inside of the arms, so that when you practice drawing blood, there will be actual simulated blood coming out so you know if you got the vein correctly or not. We got to practice administering shots, drawing blood, and inserting a catheter into the "patient's" arm, which was cool since this was the first time I ever got to do this. There was also a Sim Man in the room next door which breathes and has vital signs and everything, and we simulated rescue situations such as if a guy passes out on a plane, what are the steps you need to take for basic life saving technique.

Afterwards, we went to this huge banquet which reminded me a lot of the formals and installs that i went to in college. Same prepped dinner with tons of people (I think there were 200-300 people there?) . One of the doctors there had been chillin' on his beer for like, an hour, which vinh had pointed out to me. So i offered Vinh ALL the money i had in my wallet to go up to that doctor and say "Excuse me sir, I thought you were a doctor? So why are you NURSING THAT BEER."(Credit to Rob Nguyen who first called me out the same way a year ago). Too bad Vinh didn't do it. It would have been the highlight of my medical school career. Sad I know. (Oh yeah the speaker in the picture is Mike Honda, a congressman from norcal, im sure a lot of you norcallers have heard of him)

OOH! there was also a raffle that we had. I won a free Anatomy textbook, but since I already finished anatomy, and Vinh is starting anatomy on monday, i let him have it so he can study his way to victory or something like that.

Finally, after the banquet, we headed over to the Strikes Lounge. It was a bowling alley with tons of pool tables, arcades, air hockey, mini basketball, and it had the redsox/rays game on tv too. APAMSA rented out the entire place so we just had a buncha people in there who could go wherever they wanted, bowl as much as they wanted for free, with free drink tickets(well only one free) and tons of free food. The platters came out one after the other. We stayed until about 2am and then finally bounced. We had been up since 6:30 that morning to go to the conference and we were exhausted out of our minds, so after this very very fun day, I got to go home and finally knock the eff out.

Ok that's all for this update, hope it wasnt too long and boring. I have a midterm tomorrow, what am i doing wasting time posting! ARGH!

P.S. The APAMSA National conference will be held next year at..... dum dum dum.... UCLA!!!! Needless to say, I hope I finish my tests on the friday before and have an excuse to fly out to LA and visit y'all! It's a whole year away but it will be awesome! If you read this and are a med student and went to UCLA with me, MARK IT ON YOUR CALENDARS!