Day in the Life: Internal Medicine

In actuality, I’ve actually finished this rotation and am on Anesthesiology right now, but…oh well. I’m allowed to get behind on life in my own blog! :O

Day in the Life: Internal Medicine

A Typical Day

7 – 8 a.m.

Didactics! I wrote about them in more detail back in my Day in the Life post in General Surgery!

8 a.m. – 5-7 p.m.

This the first/only rotation I’ve had all year where I’m working with another medical student (it helps that we’re friends! :O ). We typically worked with the same preceptor for the week, and then switched off the following week to a different one.

The hospitalists split up their ER admissions in 4-hour blocks (7-11 a.m., 11 a.m.-3 p.m., and 3-7 p.m.), as well as the 36-hour blocks. (All of them were super humane and never made us do the 36-hour block with them.)

While we were on, admissions during those 4-hour blocks would range anywhere from 5-11 people. We’d meet up with our preceptor in the morning after didactics, get a copy of their patient list, and then divide + conquer!

Each of us would typically see 4 patients, write up notes, and discuss our patients’ cases with our preceptor by noon-ish, and then we’d round on the patients together after we figured out what we were going to do for them. If we finished rounding on patients earlier and hadn’t yet located our preceptor, we were told to practice being white coat ninjas.

Lunchtime was usually thrown somewhere in there (if we had a spare moment)! Sometimes, we’d just skip it altogether and power through if it looked like it might be an early day.

I’ve gained a definite appreciation for graham crackers + peanut butter as a snack!

Afternoons were usually when we’d round on any of the patients that we didn’t get to in the morning. We’d also help with admissions (e.g. heading over to the ER to find out more about patients who may or may not need to be admitted).

One of our preceptors is the chief of medicine, so he has constant meetings upon meetings, and during those times, my friend and I pore through the internets to find programs to apply to, set up our rotations for next year, work on our applications, study, etc. He also asks a ton of questions and is extremely brilliant, so I invariably feel incompetent and wish that I knew more (he’s nice about it though, thankfully), but…I’m working on it!

The other preceptor we worked with was hilarious to work with. :P When we had downtime, things like this would happen:

One of the nurses: Dr. P’s gone aphasic. He won’t speak to anyone.
Dr. L: I can fix that.

He put on post-it blinders and everything. Serious business. :O

She altered them for him.

“I’m trying to work!!!”

Cured of his aphasia by a very long and uncomfortable stare! :O She said that he was like the little brother that she had and never wanted, but it’s okay, because they’re BFFs. (Two of the bracelets pictured above were later turned into friendship bracelets/anklets. >_> )

Meals

This is a mixture of bringing my own food and eating in the physician’s lounge. Since I was in the middle of moving out, I’d been trying to eat everything in my apartment. :O I was marginally(?) successful!

Parking

Parking at the hospital was a breeze, especially if you get there before 7! Since I have didactics almost every single morning, this was not a problem.

Housing

Today’s actually the last day I’m going to be living in this apartment, but I’m still going to be here for another two weeks for my Anesthesiology rotation. What gives? :O

Hint: I’m pretty much not going to have a permanent address from now til…May 2016. Yayuh. I’ll get to what the rest of my life is gonna be like for the upcoming school year in a later post, but for these next two weeks, I’m going to be bumming on a friend’s couch!