Day in the Life: Cardiology

Hello and welcome to another Medical Mondays! Apparently it’s been ages since I’ve done a Day in the Life! I’m here to talk about….my Cardiology rotation, aka the first rotation I had when I got back from vacation!

I’ve done a Cardiology rotation before but that one got off to a rocky start because my site coordinator failed to tell them I was doing a rotation there and I got chewed out by the office manager for her mistake. I also got struck down by the plague and honestly don’t remember much of it because I was concentrating so hard on just getting through the day without passing out. Case in point, this rotation was very much welcomed/needed.

Day in the Life: Cardiology

7 a.m. – 8 a.m.

On Wednesdays and Fridays, I’d have morning report where a fellow resident or one of our attendings would go over a usually-relevant topic to that month’s theme. (I think I’m going to be participating in helping out with this soon! :O )

I had an hour gap between morning report and going to my rotation, so I’d use that time to preview my patients for the afternoon and/or get some reading done at the office while I ate breakfast!

A post shared by Farrah @ Fairyburger (@fairyburger) on Apr 28, 2017 at 11:45am PDT

I got to go for a walk one afternoon through the Rutgers Gardens with one of my fellow interns! :] Hooray for spring (aside from the allergy component)!

9 a.m. – 12:40 p.m.

Technically speaking, my morning cardiology sessions were supposed to end at noon, but since our office is located downstairs from my cardiologist’s office, I’d usually just stick around until my first patient was scheduled to come in (aka 12:40 p.m.).

I’ve actually been in contact with this cardiologist before throughout the year while working in the hospital and have been texting him periodically throughout the year. He’s super nice, brilliant, and his practice gets things done quickly, so I really enjoyed working with and learning from him. I was actually kinda disappointed that I missed 2 days of this rotation due to vacation days (but oh, those days off were really nice too).

A post shared by Farrah @ Fairyburger (@fairyburger) on Apr 30, 2017 at 12:04pm PDT

We also got to go to Rutgers Day! :] Obviously, I had to go hang out with the livestock. <3

I’d see patients with him for all sorts of different conditions (e.g. atrial fibrillation, syncope, supraventricular tachycardia, follow-up for abnormal stress tests/echos, cardiac clearances for surgery, follow-up for myocardial infarctions, etc.) and he’d walk me through how to read and interpret EKGs quickly, what to look for in order to medically clear a patient for surgery, indications for ordering a stress test (+ what kind of stress test to order) or echo, or pretty much anything that came to his mind that would be useful for me as a family med physician! :]

12:40 – 5-ish p.m. 

I’d run downstairs to my office to see my own patients! I’ve been building my patient panel of sorts since July-ish! Everyone has “breath of fresh air” patient visits, and for me, these are often the ones where they’re patients I’ve been following since I got here. :] There are tons and tons of people who come through our office, so I tend to hand out my business card to any patient that I really enjoyed talking with/taking care of and/or feel that we made some sort of headway/good progress with.

These days, I fall behind mostly because my patients don’t show up on time–I’ve had people show up 40 minutes late but I’ll still end up seeing them because I want to make sure things are okay with them. I can usually get through my visits in a timely manner since I can type super fast while I talk, but I still lack the ability to politely interrupt my patients when they go off on tangents.

With the billing system, physicals are meant for just that–an overall checkup to make sure things are going well and to make sure the patient is up to date on their immunizations and all preventative health issues (e.g. blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol), etc. It is entirely different from an acute/sick visit where you address a specific concern. We’re not supposed to do both in a single visit, but I’ve kinda been doing that too, which again affects the time thing. ._. That being said, we had a resident meeting the other day and my program director asked me to share my tips for getting my notes done super quickly with everyone so at least there’s that! ;P

A lot of my cardiologist’s patients counted their steps as a way to measure the amount of exercise they were getting! …you can clearly ese which days I walked/didn’t walk to work here. :P

• Do you track your steps? I used to have a fitbit but lost the battery–my phone tracks my steps for me though, so I guess that works out!
• Does your doctor let you address 138287439 problems at your visits? I’d love to be able to do that, but with my super complicated patients, it’s just not possible. :/
• Check out previous Day in the Life’s!