Day in the Life: Geriatrics

Happy Monday, and welcome to Medical Mondays! I’m not entirely sure if I’ve ever mentioned this here (probably because I usually only talk about my love for sports + community med), but I really like working with old people. I’ve actually legitimately considered also pursuing geriatrics but I feel like I’d get really sad. :/

I’ve kinda been doing this with most of my residency “Day in the Life‘s” but these are more like a “week in the life’s,” haha. (Day in the Life just has a nicer ring to it!)

Day in the Life: Geriatrics

Mondays

7:40 a.m. – 5-ish p.m.

I’d usually have a full day at my regular office seeing [mostly] my own patients!

7 p.m. – 9 p.m.

Ballroom dance practice!

9 p.m. – 11 p.m.

Salsa practice!

Tuesdays/Thursdays

If I didn’t have a morning office session on Tuesday, I’d go with one of my attendings to round on the residents at the assisted living facilities + nursing homes. We’d do everything from our usual monthly checkups to evaluation/follow-up on anemia, depression, broken hips/shoulders, heart failure, shortness of breath, cerumen removal, hip injections, UTIs, etc.

Not sure if I mentioned yet that after-hours and on weekends at the hospital, we cover answering service for emergency (and not-so-emergent) calls for our office, so we often talk with a lot of the nursing staff at the nursing homes our attendings cover. It was nice to finally be able to put a face to the name for a bunch of them!

On Thursday afternoons, I’d typically be in the office seeing my own patients.

Wednesdays

7 a.m. – 8 a.m.

Morning report! Wednesday lectures are usually given by the service attending on the “topic of the month.” (March was urology/nephrology month.)

8 a.m. – 9 a.m.

I usually had this time to chill, so I’d go to the library in the medical education building and get some reading/studying done (or run errands, or blog, etc.).

9 a.m. – 12 p.m.

My attending has didactics with his geriatric fellow from 9-10 where he goes over board review, but I got to sit in on these as well. (Yay for review!) From 10-12, we’d have a meeting with all the other geriatric attendings to discuss different issues.

1-5 p.m.

Home visits with my attending! I’ve done home visits before at a different rotation back in med school, but none since!

Fridays

7 a.m. – 8 a.m.

Morning report! Friday lectures are usually started off by a mini-lecture from one of the senior residents and then followed by a presentation by the intern on service (+ often collaborated upon with the medical student + pharmacy student on service).

8:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Off at a different clinic ~30 minutes away from where I’m based to work with another one of my geriatric attendings. We do lots of evaluations for dementia there and also round on patients at the nursing home/independent living facility that he covers.

1 p.m. – 5 p.m.

Friday afternoon = didactics (aka different lectures)

6 p.m. – 8 p.m.

Practice with the Rutgers Climbing (Rec) Team! :] Every time I go, I’m reminded of how I really need to start lifting regularly again. ._. I also need my finger/grip strength, har har har.

Weekends

I usually had one or both of these days off unless I was on Saturday 24-hour call! I also have ballroom practice and climbing team practice on Sunday evenings! :] Otherwise, I was free to do/catch up on whatever I need.

• What’s your typical day like? I’m really going to miss this rotation–it’s probably one of the chillest ones I’ve ever been on!
• Check out my past “Day in the Life‘s!”