I am on the cardiac care unit, which is a supposed intensive care unit. I say “supposed” because none of the patients I am caring for are actually sick; almost all of the patients in the “CCU” are in a holding pattern until something definitive can be done by another person. For instance, there are people awaiting heart transplants. Others are awaiting implantation of an implantable defibrillator. Continue reading
Awaiting Return of Bowel Function
As I wrote last week, I am on a surgical service, trauma, at the moment. And my day is governed by, and revolves around, poop.
It is astounding how much of my daily well-being on trauma is influenced by the ability of someone else to poop. I think about it literally all day. It is often the first question I ask patients in the morning and the last question I ask them before I go home. It sits on my constantly-growing, frequently changing TO DO list I carry with me as the only constant: “Check on BMs for Patients A, B, F, W, P.” Continue reading
A Traumatic Recollection
Okay so in case you were wondering, being a resident is way better than being a med student.
Residency started with an ultrasound block. The ultrasound block consisted mostly of watching videos about How To Ultrasound Stuff, and then going to the emergency department and trying to ultrasound stuff. It was a very relaxing time. I even tried to teach the med students with us stuff about ultrasound, although this was limited by the fact that both students were smarter than this July intern and knew it. Continue reading
Putting In Orders
Although most of my medical school classmates have already begun their formal residency rotations, we here at the Necessarily Anonymous Emergency Medicine Residency have yet to officially start. This is, depending on your point of view, either because our residency is warm and fuzzy and wants us to have a high quality of life, or they lack so much confidence in our abilities that they feel it necessary to train us up for an entire month. Continue reading
Intern
So, we’re interns now. At some point in the last two weeks, someone handed me a pager and an ID badge that says “M.D.” after my legal name. Next week, my co-interns and I start taking introductory shifts in our emergency room.
IMPOSTOR SYNDROME EPISODE IV: The Intern Menace
Well, it’s been an entire eight months since my last away rotation and the attendant crippling anxiety brought on by the realization that everyone else is smarter than you, so we’re overdue.
The fourth year of medical school is especially strange with respect to my favorite syndrome.* After the end of away rotations and the submission of your residency application, interview offers start rolling in. As a medical student who by definition has spent the last 40 months getting emotionally kickboxed by people higher up on the totem pole (which is everyone), the interviews come as a wonderful respite.
Continue reading
M.D.
Although it has been quite some time since my last post, rest assured that I – along with my classmates – were diligently at work, grinding through pathophysiology of kidney disease and Obtaining Outside Medical Reco—haha, no, we were all on vacation.
I went home to D.C., played with my dog, went to Colombia for two weeks, and drank on the beach enough to poison the Gulf of Mexico. Continue reading
