Third year of medical school is about doing rotations through the five core clinical disciplines of medicine: Internal Medicine, Surgery, OB/GYN, Pediatrics, and Psychiatry.
This week began my first core clinical rotation, Internal Medicine. After two days of pointless orientations that brought me no closer to understanding what exactly my responsibilities are, I began work at Caritas – Mary Immaculate Hospital in Queens. I was assigned to my attending Dr. Sossi and my intern Dr. Kumar on the fourth floor of the hospital.
The first day was a real Charlie Foxtrot since it was also the resident’s first day at the hospital. The second wasn’t much better. I have yet to see a patient of my own, and I can’t say that I’ve learned anything in particular. If teaching was confusing in Basic Sciences, then it is nothing short of haphazard in the hospital. Things get thrown at you from all over the spectrum of medicine, with no rhyme or reason. I suppose it is my responsibility to take everything I heard during the day on the floor, and organize it into some sort of study schedule.
So far, the day entails trying to keep up with the list of patients, making sure that the list is constantly up-to-date with labs, medications, radiographic studies, etc. We are also responsible for a daily check of the patients’ vitals and general status. Occasionally we follow the intern into a patient room and observe him examine and talk to the patient, but mostly, we’re chasing after paperwork.
The schedule is mostly filled with meetings, lectures, and rounds, so we’re often dropping everything we’re doing and running to the next thing. It’s kind of disjointed but I guess part of the lesson is to be able to juggle a hundred things at once and still be flexible enough to go with the flow.
We’ll see how this all works out.
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