Reflections on PGY3 as a Family Medicine Resident

Welcome to Medical Mondays! This is a continuation of…my reflection on intern year as well as my reflection on my second year.

If anyone’s checked my PGY III curriculum post, you’d probably notice that I came down with a serious case of senioritis and barely wrote any Day in the Life posts, so I figured if nothing else, I could at least do a reflections post!

(For the record, I finished residency at the end of June, but since I’ve been on my road trip and was taking an unintentional blog break, here we are now.)

Reflections On PGY3 As A Family Medicine Resident

Favorite Medical-Related Extra-Curriculars/Residency Moments:

• Food adventures with my favorite interns (e.g. Vietnamese Beef Vermicelli Bowls)
• The residency “roast” one of my favorite interns did for me. “Roast” is in quotes because the things he said were probably some of the nicest, sweetest things anyone has ever said about me, and there was no insult to be found anywhere.
• Spending time with my fellow third years (we got to hang out more during the month of graduation than we did for the entire year)
• This may sound really weird, but on the whole, my job interviews were a lot of fun!

My favorite interns! <3!

Favorite Rotation: Sports Medicine at Rutgers, Sports Medicine with my former chief resident + Outpatient Pediatrics at an FQHC

Memorable Moments:

• Back in one of my first rotations as an intern, I had Emergency Medicine with an attending who told me mid-shift that she didn’t appreciate me being on my phone so much while working (I was partially using it to look up stuff, but I did also answer several texts during my shift). When I rolled in one night, she was my attending again and her first words were, “Fong. I remember you.” (Me: Well, shit. I’m in for a great night.) It actually went super well though! She told me I’d come a super long way and that I did an amazing job and that I was excellent at urgent care and should consider doing more of it in my future practice!
• One of my regular patients came in to see if I could check out a lump on her breast and although her breast cancer risk was extremely low, there was a definite change, so I ordered an ultrasound/mammogram. It turned out to be BI-RADS 5 (highly suspicious of malignancy). I set her up with the breast clinic and she started chemo treatments and I’d call her periodically in between to see how she was doing. When she heard I was leaving, she came in and asked one of my medical assistants to page me so she could give me a hug. <3
• A patient came in to establish care with me and liked me so much that he brought his whole family in to see me, including his newborn daughter. I gave her a children’s book before I left and they asked me to sign it so that when she’s old enough to read, she’ll be able to read my message too.

I am super awesome at Microsoft Paint.

Most Interesting Cases:

• Perhaps not the most interesting in terms of cases, but in terms of me learning how to handle avoiding getting punched/assaulted? There are two that stand out! One was with a bipolar patient in the hospital and refusing to take his medications or to receive any kind of treatment, but kept coming in and out of neighboring ERs (and our ER) for chest pain, getting a million dollar workup to the point where cardiologists felt they kinda had to cath him just to make sure he was really fine, only to have him refuse all treatment and run to the next ER for the same thing. The other was for a patient who was supposed to have been discharged from our clinic, but…no one ever sent him a letter, so I got to see him. Security was called, the police was called, and we had to physically escort him out of the building. Fun times.

Least Favorite Rotation:

…I don’t think I actually really had a rotation I really despised this year. I was dreading Peds ER due to the complaints I heard prior to starting from my fellow residents, but it was actually pretty fun!

Worst Mistake:

This didn’t result in a mistake made on a patient I was taking care of, but was a good reminder to not ignore my own health in order to take care of others. (Long story short, I had a bunch of abscesses in my face/a tooth and was in excruciating pain for several days but ignored it because I was trying to take care of one of my continuity patients.)

Most Annoying Case:

During the weekend and after-hours on weekdays, we cover the answering service for our clinic, which is supposed to be used for emergency calls only (but often is not). One person called to demand that I come over to his mother’s house to change her catheter and rained down a bunch of expletives with a whole lot of degrading/condescending language when I explained to him that that was not what the answering service was for.

We were robbed of our victory at the knowledge bowl because they wouldn’t acknowledge that our answer was correct beforehand and didn’t want to hurt people’s feelings afterward. >_>

Best Advice Given:

“Everyone” includes you.

Advice from my program director! She was trying to figure out the best advice to impart on me before I left and “everyone includes you” is in relation to making sure that when I’m trying to take care of everyone, that also needs to include myself.

• What life advice would you give to a new doctor? I’ve technically been a doctor for since 2016, but now it feels a little more real?!