Day In The Life: Family Medicine (Acting Internship)

My future envisioned practice is most likely going to be outpatient, and my third year of med school didn’t provide me with too much experience in the way of inpatient medicine, so there was definitely a lot to learn on this rotation!

I’d previously had the misconception that audition rotations and AI’s (acting internships) were the same thing, but…not necessarily!

As the name suggests, you assume the roles of an intern (first-year resident)–AI’s/sub-internships tend to give you a better picture of what that residency will be like, but if you can’t do one of those, an audition rotation in outpatient or some other specialty works too, in the sense that you still get to know at least some of the faculty/residents!

I found out about this program from when I went to North Carolina Family Medicine Day with my friend, and after some not-so-fun scheduling mishaps including an almost-cancelled rotation (noooo!), this finally got to happen!

Day in the Life: Family Medicine (Acting Internship)

First off, I just want to say that I adore the peds ceiling, and want it in my future house. :O

A Typical Day

(This is also more of a 2-weeks-in-the-life post!) My rotation was somewhat shortened since I was taking my boards on the first day, and interviewing on the last day, but they definitely managed to squeeze enough hours into the days that I was working to make up for it!

Hours were typically from 7a.m. to 7 p.m., and I was also on night float over the weekend, which equated to 2 “14”-hour shifts (I worked through Daylight Savings + Halloween :O ).

Morning report was at 7 a.m., and on the day shift, I was typically assigned 2-4 patients to round on, and 2-3 admissions (depending on how busy the day was). I’d check up on each of my patients and write up their progress notes, and write up the history & physical for the new admits, then present them to their respective attending physicians. We’d do morning rounds at 11 a.m. whilst eating lunch, and then work on admissions, orders, (and in my case, reading up on my patients’ conditions) in the afternoon, and checkout was at ~6 p.m.

The layout of the hospital was somewhat confusing, so I definitely got lost a couple times in my first few days. (As the residents put it, that’s why they give us phones to carry around.)

On night float, we weren’t responsible for rounding on everyone–just on the patients that needed attention for different things (e.g. unstable, waiting on a lab result, etc.), and we took care of all the new admissions. My night shifts honestly weren’t bad–I did put in ~30 hours over the weekend, but there was more time for teaching and looking things up, and I was allowed to take a nap! :O

(Hour 9 of 16)

B: You know you’re allowed to go get some rest if you’re done with your work, right?
F: Hm? I did not. :O I was preparing to just stay awake the whole time.
B: Sleeping is not weakness. It’s being smart. Go get some rest!

So…off I went (even though brain did not compute this–what if it was a trap!?) :O?!). I woke up in a panic about an hour later because I thought I’d overslept, but everyone else was apparently napping too, so whew!

I’m not accustomed to giving myself breaks on my clinical rotations and I’ve never taken a sick day or asked to leave early, so this was unknown territory for me, especially on auditions/AI’s, because these are the rotations where you especially want to work your hardest and do your best. (Case in point: I really wish I’d had more inpatient experience so I would’ve been more impressive, but alas. I tried?!)

Meals

Not all meals were provided, but it was pretty darn close! One of the attendings would frequently bring in delicious treats from The Chocolatier, and there were always snacks galore, or a resident willing to temporarily lend us their identity so we could swipe food from the physicians’ lounge.

Ancient Grains, Arugula, & Chicken Salad from Panera!

I went to Super Target on the first day of my rotation and spent $20 so I’d have the ingredients to make dinner for the 2.5 weeks I’d be spending in NC. Truth be told, buying groceries probably wasn’t even necessary, so coupled with the meals provided at the hospital, I was definitely more than covered for food!

Grilled Chicken Salad from Chili’s! My attending told me I won the award for healthiest meal ordered, haha.

Parking

Parking at the hospital is free, and they gave us the code for the physicians’ parking lot, so that made life even easier!

Housing

The student housing was located in a 2-bedroom/2-bathroom apartment about 0.2 miles from the hospital. They were pretty spiffy, and I had a housemate (apartment-mate?) from South Carolina who I got along with really well–I think it’d be all sorts of awesome if we ended up in the same intern class! :D

I was let out early on Friday and told to “go do something fun,” so we decided to explore the town…and ended up at TJ Maxx in the Concord Mills mall, because we are awesome.

Cat lady mugs!

Check out my other Day in the Life posts!