Verses and
Advice

Think! Plan! Do! Enjoy! Criticize! Praise! Live!

UBS 3 in Itapoã brings us many challenges throughout the semester, but know that you are never alone, and the multidisciplinary team is of utmost importance in this process. You will be exposed to a world of information and content... Calm down! It will all work out in the end! Make the most of what the rotation has to offer, and contribute as much as you can. And for that... Think! Plan! Do! Enjoy! Criticize! Praise! Live! After all, one day the wheel of life turns...

Hi. This is Wesley, class 99

Welcome to the primary care rotation. I hope you have many interesting experiences and can learn and grow a lot. Grow not only in the profession itself (adding content, expanding medical techniques, and building clinical thinking), but also in teamwork, helping others, and broadening your view of the world.

I'll warn you it won't be easy, with dense weeks of work, a lot of sweat, and little rest (just like our whole journey so far). But it will all be worth it. Give your best.

The tip I leave is this: make the most of every patient. Contact with their stories, anxieties, and joys is very enriching and transforms us. The song I chose helps as a guide in this whirlwind of experiences and feelings, valuing key aspects of this continuous exchange that makes up the art of caring:

“Knowing the tricks and the mornings” - know all the faces, all the good and bad sides of everyday life

“The taste of pasta and apples” - savoring all of life's experiences, feeling the sweet and at the same time bitter taste of life

“Understanding the march” It is trying to understand the events of day to day

“And each being carries within the gift of being capable, of being happy” – we are the composers of our own life journey

A big hug and an excellent rotation!

Folks, make the most of this time that is the internship. Don't focus only on studying and pressuring yourselves all the time. Relax, exercise, have fun, and above all, sleep plenty. Sleep is essential for any human being; don't think this simple act is superfluous. It isn't. Otherwise, keep moving forward, it will all work out!

Primary Care is one of the most complex and simple areas at the same time. Complex in involving so many variables and content in one place. Simple in being the closest and most effective care you can offer. The Social Medicine internship is worth gold; it is one of the times when you get most hands-on and see the results in a very rewarding way.

Advice: during the medical course we are constantly pressed and reminded of how little we know and how much we need to study. This generated in me an anguish and a shame about not knowing that for a while changed my relationship with medicine and made me resent my teachers. Today I see no shame at all in not knowing; I see shame in arrogance, in not seeking knowledge, and in a lack of humility. I think not knowing, acknowledging error, and acknowledging one's own ignorance are ways of acknowledging our own humanity. And human doctors are rare.

1- Don't take the “patient's non-adherence to the proposed care” personally, don't get irritated by it. Don't lose the bond.

Remain a point of support and backing in case they decide to change their mind and follow your guidance.

2- Read a different book each month (MedCurso, Medcel, Harrison, and the like don't count) to keep your sanity.

If there is one piece of advice I can leave for those who come through here after me, it is to always do your best. Nobody wants you to be the best of all, or perfect, infallible, etc., but in every situation you can do your best. As Nordic culture said, “access to paradise is guaranteed only to those who did their work in the best way they could in life.”

Consider your task and your psychological state, your health, your physical condition, and understand what the best you can offer would be there. Then dedicate yourself to doing your best. Do this in all your daily activities. It may seem more tiring, but knowing that you did everything you could do does a great deal of good for yourself, and besides, everything you do will be of better quality. Remember: you are not meant to be excellent at everything; you are meant to distribute the work, among everything you have to do, so as to leave everything done in the best way possible for you in that situation.

The period in family medicine seems long, but is actually very short for doing everything we can. Make the most of all the time you can (always remembering to rest) to take part in the unit's consultations and projects. Dedication will take you far!

You will surely feel anguished and anxious in the first week. Rest assured, that is exactly what the feeling is, and be sure that everything will make sense from the second week on. And from there you will dive into everything primary care is and means, and be able to contribute in whatever way you can and want to all the projects under way. It will be an excellent month to realize that being a doctor also involves having responsibilities and that you can do much more than you imagine for the community. Enjoy it and absorb everything you can!

First piece of advice: calm down, next week you will understand everything! Afterwards, even if you aren't interested in devoting yourself to basic care, take the chance to exercise the humanity that exists in you; it can be transformative. There is nothing we cannot learn from others. Gratitude to all!

Reap as much as you can of the fruits of the tree of mutual learning, persistent in this arid environment, a survivor of the rains of hope and perseverance of those who believe that everything can be better....

If we lead life with kindness and empathy, every place or experience we pass through becomes part of who we are and, as the verse says, when the sun rises again for you in every place you have been, it will awaken everything good that was cultivated.

May we always have the sensitivity not to let the rush of everyday life dictate our lives, but know how to enjoy every second of experience we have the privilege of living.

May work demands not dictate our pace of service, so that we can devote our time to others the way everyone deserves.

May we always keep our hearts open to the exchanges life allows us to experience. May we always be ready to receive as much as we are used to giving.

Someone once told me that experience lived with reflection is far more enriching.

I think there was no better rotation to hear this than Social Medicine. May we manage to keep alive part of that utopian and idealistic spirit that was so present at the start of our university life and that was so bruised throughout this crazy course.

A friend of mine once told me, in her early thirties, that I shouldn't wait for the ideal time. She waited ten years of marriage to have her child and told me she then realized the ideal situation would never come. The job would never be enough, life would never be so calm. The less you expect it, a new opportunity appears, a new demand, some novelty. She wanted a child, but her life was never ready to receive one, until she and her husband decided that this life was a ready life. There was nothing different, it was the same life, but they understood that life doesn't always give us the pauses we think we need.

I learned that, working in primary care, the same applies. You can't wait for the ideal moment to implement ideas and seek improvements. There is no waiting for a pause, for a calmer moment. The demands keep coming, there is always a patient to see, always work to do. We can simply be content to follow the path already laid out, that packed-earth path where the grass no longer grows because everyone walks along it. Or we can strive to build a better path. The point is that if we choose to build a new road, we will have to do it while walking, because life doesn't stop... Some days it rains, others the sun shines, but life doesn't stop.

Since our course lacks experience in primary care, I suggest you make the most of this short time at the UBS to learn different approaches to identify and deal with each patient's social and cultural limitations. These are methods you can adapt to any medical specialty you pursue, thus offering your patients more complete care.

Good luck!

Medicine is full of surprises. We are always learning something new, and the more we dive into this world, the more knowledge and experience we gain.

However, it was only during the month I spent at the UBS with Estêvão that I realized how we can make a difference in people's lives. The things I learned there went far beyond medical knowledge.

Advice? Make the most of the experience at the health post, because if your professional life mirrors this experience, professional success is guaranteed!

PS: I'm not trying to be a suck-up, but all of this is thanks to Estêvão's work!

A big hug!

Hi, everyone!! How's the Internship going?? Now that you are going through here, it's already coming to an end. I'm sure words like residency, exhaustion, learning (and even Medcurso haha) have predominated so far. Yes, it is an intense period. But necessary. So my advice is:

- Don't forget to look at the gifts the internship brings: the patients, the fellow professionals (staff, residents, and interns), the clinical cases, the unity of the class and, above all, the chance to listen to, help, and understand those who need you.

- Don't forget to have fun and do an extra activity no matter how tired, worried, stressed, and buried in overdue handouts you are.

- Listen to the advice of those around you, but erase that negative and biased opinion about anyone or any rotation. Draw your own conclusions. Don't make the Internship heavier than necessary.

- Finally, if things get tough, remember that everyone went through it. Everyone made it. You will too. In your own way, it will work out!! Breathe and move on. One day at a time.

Well, after the self-help moment hahaha, all that's left is to wish you a great end of the Internship and a wonderful graduation!! See you around!!

A hug!!

Everyone, welcome to a super-productive period of your internship, in which you will realize that you really can already be doctors!

I know insecurity hits at first (and that it really lasts a good while — not only here, but especially after the CRM license arrives), but with a little time you will realize that everything you have been through influenced the present moment, and what a while ago may have seemed meaningless finds its meaning here.

This is the moment when you already have a large part of the knowledge you will need for the practice of general medicine, but perhaps don't yet know it's there. Now is the time to discover that it exists!

Enjoy it!

Our present actions will one day be part of the past of our lives, but also of our future. Take every learning opportunity here, and you will notice that the richest experiences you will live will not be related only to the internship.