The new interns started their orientation this week.
I say this mostly because it means I am just a few short days away from no longer being “the intern.” This is fantastic news, mostly because it relieves me of the duty of explaining to non-medical people the vestigial and archaic distinction between an intern and a resident. Just so everyone (grandma) remembers:
I made that diagram. Aren’t you impressed?
There is a Bible in medicine for interns. Published in 1978 by an intern doing his first year in internal medicine, The House of God is a cynical and hilarious look at the dehumanizing, cruel, and sad life that is residency. Continue reading
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
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
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.
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
My time at the VA intensive care unit has come to a close, and while I am currently enrolled in a class (name: “Medical Imaging and Anatomy,” actual name, “Nate Gives Absolutely No F*cks”), what I’m actually doing is just twiddling my thumbs until it’s time to match on Friday. Continue reading
Two things right up front:
With that said, I write this post while experiencing a fairly complex, ebbing and flowing mix of trepidation, desperation, apathy, and outright nihilism. These are the emotions of a compromised fourth year student with a willpower wellspring shallower than a lunchbox. When you do nothing for almost three months, your brain atrophies; at this point, all I’m really capable of doing is following the smells of free food and clicking “Yes, I’m Still Watching” on the Netflix popup. This bodes poorly for my ICU rotation starting tomorrow. Continue reading
Am I still a medical student? I am legitimately no longer sure.
In the last four weeks, I’ve flown to five different cities, taken a two-week family vacation to Japan, stayed in enough hotel rooms to bankrupt a minor consulting firm, and worn a suit enough to notice that I am clearly fatter than when I had it first tailored in 2012. Continue reading
Interview season is crazy and exhausting and fun and exhausting and AWESOME.
For those of you who are nonmedical, interview season is the fourth year winter when all other medical school responsibilities evaporate like a bottle of wine at a Thanksgiving dinner political discussion. No clinical responsibilities, easily avoidable committee responsibilities, sometimes cancel-able friend responsibilities.
If anyone asks you for something that you don’t want to do, you just say, “oh, sorry, I have an interview.” Continue reading
crashing resident 