First day of in-patient pediatrics. So begins what I’ve been told is 12-hour workdays. Had to be out of the house by 5:30 AM. I gotta started shifting my sleep schedule. Getting up wasn’t so bad though, probably in-part because I was actually kind of excited. This is where I’ll get to see a lot of the more acute pathologies and the “zebras” (a somewhat appropriate term given that I need to take the “giraffe” elevators to get to my unit) that you usually only see in board questions. After meeting the residents, both of whom seem really awesome and chill, I get my first patient. Boom, bronchiolitis. Ok that one’s not so rare (there were a few cases, and there will probably be more in the future), but I’ve never actively seen a patient with it. Things only got more interesting as we went on rounds. I heard some stridor in-real time for the first time.
It was a busy day, and I felt like I was constantly jumping from one thing to the next. Pre-rounding and sign-out, teaching session, rounding, charting, lunch conference, more charting. Luckily, I only had the one patient and my residents let me out early today. I kinda wanted to stay, but also recognize that I probably should take free time when I can get it. They assured me that there would really be nothing interesting to do the rest of the day and that tomorrow they will have more patients for me. I guess we’ll see how I feel then.
nANIMOv 