The wards

It's been a hectic first three days. I've left the hospital at 6:00 or 7:00 at least every day. We see our patients at 7:00am, round with the residents and staff at 8:00am and then do our work for the rest of the day, which includes scheduling tests, getting results, admitting, discharging, consulting the other services. All this normally doesn't take 12 hours, but we're still learning how to do the basic things. We don't even know how to document that we want a nurse to check a patient's vital signs 4 times a day.

I've had some interesting cases so far. I have a baby girl with Down Syndrome, an adolescent boy with septic arthritis in his knee and another baby girl with anemia so bad that she's lucky to be alive.

I'll post more when I have a story to tell

Begin Clerkship

Here I am, starting clerkship on Monday. If you're wondering what clerkship is, it's the phase of medical school where the students are constantly at the hospital. We sometimes stay overnight at the hospital and answer calls, and we stay some weekends and answer calls as well. We become an integral part of the medical team during this time. We're responsible for the patients that are assigned to us, and we're often the first person the patient sees when entering the hospital.

I have a lot to learn this year. It's no longer textbooks and multiple choice questions.

Sure, I'm scared, but the excitement to no longer be at a desk or a library is thrilling. Yeah, I still have to be studying, and spend time in the library researching, but now it won't be the only thing that I do.

My first rotation is 8 weeks in pediatrics, a topic we really don't learn much about during the first two years of med school. As a result, we're highly supervised, which decreases the anxiety a bit at the same time. On top of the medical stuff, I'm going to be learning how to deal with families during this rotation since, for neonates or infants, it's obviously only the family that can convey any information to me.

I'll be posting my stories, keeping everything confidential of course and at times just giving my opinion or simply letting everyone know how things are going.