I’ve been pretty bad about keeping up with these since after my month hiatus for board studying, and this lack of posting is in no way indicative my experience on Pediatric Infectious Disease. To be honest, I went into it not really expecting much. I mostly chose it because I have a mild interest, wanted to see what the specialty was about, and they offered it at a hospital close to my current residence.
I actually really enjoyed my time on it. Things I like were:
- The thought process. One of my fears about specializing is that I will miss problem solving for patient’s other active problems. While this was kind of the case and was apparent in my impressions/ assessments, I did feel like we had to do pretty extensive differential production and work-up/through these complex or mysterious ID cases. We had to think about all the systems (because microbes can go anywhere), but we didn’t have to manage every part of the patient.
- HIV clinic. I didn’t realize that the Peds ID doctors were the primaries at the HIV clinic in this specific community and they have a pretty extensive patient base. They see kids and adults which appealed to my orientation towards Med-Peds and definitely opened up ID as a potential specialty if I end up doing Med-Peds that would allow me to do inpatient work and longitudinal outpatient care. Plus I got to learn so much about the current state of HIV care locally and around and world as well as the stigma that has illogically persisted around HIV.
- The hours. Even though most days I got in at around 6:30 AM and left at 5:00 PM, I wasn’t feeling super drained at the end of the day. My work was varied and I felt like I had the time to think about things and also do a lot of meaningful learning. And probably as an attending I wouldn’t have to be in so early.
Things I didn’t like so much:
- Had to sort of ignore other things. I touched on this above and yes in some cases this was a good thing, but also I’m just a curious/ nosy person and I want to know why certain non-ID related things are going on, but my attendings kinda steered me away from that, at least for the purposes of this rotation.
- Isolation. This may be a med student specific perspective thing, but I didn’t have a team of residents to really work with, it was just me and my attending for that given week. My attendings were lovely, very nice and patient and liked to teach, but you know as a student its always nice to have people who are closer to you in terms of training to kinda give you the more relevant tips and tricks of just survival.
Anyways, all that said I had a really positive experience and will definitely be keeping ID in my back pocket as a possible specialty down the road.
Tomorrow I start on inpatient family medicine which I think will be pretty important in terms of me deciding what residency I will ultimately apply into.
nANIMOv 