Significant contributors to rising health care costs are diseases influenced by lifestyle, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer. Unfortunately, American medical education devotes disproportionately little time training future doctors in prevention. Approach. With the support of medical education leadership, medical students collaborated with a faculty advisor at Wake Forest School of Medicine to test the feasibility of a broadbased, student-led lifestyle medicine curriculum. After 3 introductory sessions delivered to an entire medical school class, a smaller pilot series with 16 first-year medical students was held after-hours, featuring experiential learning in nutrition and cooking, physical activity, and sleep. The 8 modules were designed to improve student health, wellness, and knowledge of health behaviors. Feedback. The program was implemented into the first-year medical school class. An unforeseen benefit of the pilot was increased student volunteering in community-based wellness activities and research. Two components of success were the handson, experiential modules and being student-led. Details on curriculum development, schedule, and content are provided.
We describe the case of a patient presenting with odd neurologic symptoms initially thought to represent somatization who was found to have critical hypokalemia manifesting as hypokalemic non-periodic paralysis. It was determined that the patient had baseline hypokalemia as a function of alcohol abuse, exacerbated by self overmedication with hydrochlorothiazide for elevated blood pressure readings at home. The diagnosis was suspected when an electrocardiogram was obtained demonstrating a pseudo-prolonged QT interval with ST depression, consistent with T-U wave fusion and a QU interval with an absent T wave.1 The patient received oral and intravenous potassium and magnesium supplementation with resolution of symptoms.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.