10 Med School Terms II

Hi everyone, and welcome to Medical Mondays! If you remember long long time ago, when I finished my last rotation for third year, I did a “10 Med School Terms” post to celebrate. Well, the time has come again, because GUESS WHO’S DONE WITH ALL HER ROTATIONS FOR MEDICAL SCHOOL?!

This girllllllll!

Cordelia got hit by a pickup last week (…), so my preceptor gave me Thursday and Friday off to deal with insurance companies and all that lovely stuff and told me to just come in over the weekend for a couple hours while he was working in urgent care…but when I showed up on Saturday morning, I discovered that he realized on Friday night that he actually wasn’t working this weekend, so he told me to just send him my paperwork.

I’m blissfully free til graduation! :D!

Aside from the ACLS recertification exam I’m taking today. (Please send good thoughts.)

As with the last “med school terms” post, please note that these are just for fun, and should in no way be taken as legitimate science/medicine/anything related to either of the two (well, other than the first three definitions, which are actually pretty legit)!

Interns

“Medical intern” is a term used in some countries to describe a physician in training who’s completed medical school and has obtained a medical degree, but doesn’t yet have a full license to practice medicine unsupervised. It is often used in the U.S. to describe someone in their first year of residency, or PGY-1 (PostGraduate Year-1).

Resident

A resident is a physician who’s finished medical school and is receiving training in a specialized area. S/he is also sometimes referred to as PGY-2, PGY-3, PGY-4, etc., depending on what year of residency s/he is in.

Fellowship/Fellows

A fellow is someone who has completed his/her residency, and is pursuing additional training in a subspecialty of that field of training. The training that’s completed in the years after finishing a residency is called a fellowship.

White Cloud

Resident or doctor who always seems to have good luck while they’re working–call nights are usually uneventful, with very few (if any) admissions and straightforward diagnoses. They tend to be able to easily discharge their patients without complications, and have the least busy days. (See also: The Difference Between White Clouds and Black Clouds.)

Black/Dark Cloud

In contrast to the white cloud, this is…the opposite. Black clouds are residents/physicians who constantly get admissions when they’re on call, and their patients’ conditions often take a turn for the worse. Discharges rarely, if ever, go smoothly. (See also: Medicalese101: White Clouds/Dark Clouds.)

Rock

A patient on your inpatient service who is super, super stable, but for whatever reason, will not be getting discharged anytime soon, and will likely be staying on your service forever.

Slug Syndrome

A patient who, despite every member of the medical team’s best efforts, will not consent to get up to walk the halls, and refuses to be discharged despite being medically stable

Bounceback

A patient who keeps returning to the hospital with the same medical condition.

Curbside Consult

Often performed when a physician wants to get unofficial/informal input from another physician without getting them officially involved on the patient’s care, either because s/he knows the answer already and just wants to run it by someone else first, or because s/he thinks the problem isn’t major enough to warrant an official consult.

(I may be adding more and more to this indefinitely, but we shall see what I come across in residency. :O )

Disclaimer: This  week’s topic is just for fun, and should in no way, shape or form be taken seriously! (See full disclaimer here.)