The English Program at the Faculty

The last year started in the faculty the curricular innovation in two careers: Physical Therapy and Obstetrics. This new concept of curriculum consists in join different subjects into a big one, taking the essential things of these to improve the learning of the students. In all this transformation, one of the principals innovations was include and establish the English language as an obligatory subject inside the curriculum.

Personally when I started to study Physical Therapy, I never thought that I'm going to have an English course, I wasn't really happy for that, because when I was in the School my teachers wasn't goods, and even they didn't take a real importance to his classes, I thought that the English was the same in all places, but I was wrong. The English course is very important for all the students, even more for the Medicine Faculty's students. In a country where we have to compete a lot for a good job, is really important have many tools to develop us of the best way in this world, specifically in this country.

The topics of the course were advancing in quantity and difficulty. At the beginning the topics were more basics, but to the last term in intermediate level, were always related with our professions or with health topics.
One of the most important things are that when I started to study physical therapy there were a lot of papers to read, and personally I didn't understand very much, but now is not very difficult to me read a paper, even a  scientific paper with all the medicals names, because the course includes a special strengthening in this topic.

Finally I think that this subject is very beneficial for us as students of a health career, because the handling of this language, allows us be aware about the principals techniques in our professional ambit. Furthermore this innovations has an implicit implication and this is that we can share with students of different careers like Obstetrics, a very important instance that existed in the old curriculum with the traditional subjects, but that in the news subject was eliminate unintentionally, Personally I feel very pleased with this course and I hope that can continue improving the learning of all the students.

The Brain!

The last October's Tuesday, Dr. Pedro Maldonado came to our class and talked about the interesting topic of the Human Brain Myths.

That day, Dr. Maldonado talked about several myths of human brain, but was one of them that attracted my attention more than the others: the capacity of the brain of save the information in different areas.

Is interesting how our brain can save some kinds of memories in one place and others kinds in other site, or if I am seeing a picture the brain activation is very similar that if I am thinking in that picture. There is not a particular area that is it only for one function.

Is like a defense mechanism, because if we have an accident that hurts our brain, not all the information is going to be missed.

This knowledge is very important in the physical therapy, because in Neurokinesiology the principal work is the rehabilitation of patients that suffer of any central nervous system's disease, and an important treatment is strengthen functions of other zones of the brain that in their diseases the original place was in the damaged area. Things like memory, movement or somatotopy are suceptible of recover with a hard treatment but not always are very effective. So we need to specialize more in these issues to get more knowledge and improve our treatment's system and techniques

STRESS!!

What is stress? in a common dictionary we can find a definition like: "Tension caused by overwhelming situations that originate psychosomatic reactions or psychological troubles, sometimes serious."
I think that this definition is right, but is not complete yet. We can say to complete this definition, from a medical perspective, that the stress is a physiological reaction of human body with a lot of defense mechanisms to face a threatening situation.
In Chile we have highs levels of stress related work principally, because some people work about 12 hours daily for a littel money quantity, they don't have de necesary infrastructure or they don't like their work environment.

Many poeple who have been suffered stress in their lives for a long time, probably will develop serious diseases like cancer, irritable bowel, etc.

Some physiologycal symptoms are the release of catecholamines like adrenaline, release of cortisol and ekephalin.
Tachycardia and tachipnea(the increase of respiratory frequency) are more visibles symptoms.
In the short-term these symptoms increase the survival probabilities in dangerous situations, but in medium-term, they can provoke insomnia depression, muscle pain, anxiety, etc. But not all the people have the same symptoms

The stress for me, as a student, is very commonm, especially in testing periods. I feel very tired, i don't sleep a lot, I don't have hungry, I have headache, etc. But I just have to wait the weekend, receive a good massage, sleep all that i have to sleep, make a break in the studies and I am ready for te next week.

The toxic red river

In a metal plant of Ajka, a town in Hungary located 100 miles southwest of Budapest, a gigantic sludge reservoir bursted last Monday.
The red sludge started to move like a real river and arrived to little towns that were in his bed causing a big damage to the people, houses, cars, animals, plants, etc. that was there.
The original pH of the slurry was about 12, a very dangerous alkaline level that can provoke serious burns, but actually the pH is under 10 and a harmless level is between 6 and 8.
About four people have died by this mud, three are still missing and about one hundred people were injuried.
Now the principal problem is that the toxic red river has reached te Mosoni-Danube, a branch of the Danube river, the second longest in Europe, that border with Slovakia and Austria. And the principal efforts of the European Union are focus in stop the movement of this big mass of sludge, because can provoke a very serious damage in the environment if can reach the Danube, for all the underwater species that live there. Also if the mud can reach the Danube this disaster will affect at least half a dozen other countries.
Greenpeace said yesterday that the spill was one of the "top three environmental disasters in Europe in the last 20 or 30 years"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/07/hungary-sludge-spill-reaches-danube