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Friday, February 20, 2009

My Medicine Rotation: A Week By Week Guide

Week 1: What am I doing? And why have I been doing it for so many hours?

Week 2: Hm, didn't I go to medical school with you people? Why do I still seem to be in medical school, whereas you all seem to be in charge of me?

Week 3: Hey, didn't we go to high school together? Except you were a class below me and now you are my intern and I had no idea you even went to med school?

Week 4: I'm starting to get the hang of this a tiny little bit! Good thing it's my last week here.

Scene change from big university hospital to small community hospital with residents from all over the world

Week 5: My new intern wants to be in a different field, specifically surgery. He is therefore unhappy with life and presumably as a consequence found it too difficult to speak to me for the week and a half I was supposed to be working with him. I guess we've all been there.

Week 6: The people I'm working with are speaking to me now. It's...nicer. It's interesting to see all the advantages and disadvantages of having a smaller hospital. Advantage: 150% less time spent navigating a huge bureaucracy and vast physical distance to get the simplest of things done. Disadvantage: some of the attending physicians are really not interested in working with students or residents and are rude, if not hostile, regarding input/questions/my existence.

Week 7: Good lord, I've been doing this for seven weeks. Thinking back through the haze, I believe I also registered my dissertation somewhere in there. Defense Date: March 16th. Relatedly, I cannot seems to stop myself from getting into epidemiology-type disputes with the residents and attendings in public forums. It is possible my exhaustion is starting to show through, as documented by my current intern this morning on his iphone.
I had heard this before I started, but it really is hard to be judged by everyone, all the time.

Week 8: TBA

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

We judge you: Sunshine!

Anonymous said...

We think you're great! Aunt C and Uncle G

Annie ~ إني said...

"They'll never be happy 'cause they're not happy with themselves."
--Mary J. Blige

Keep on keepin' on!