I’m definitely feeling more and more like a 4th year medical student. Today was my first day rotating through the emergency department and they really had me hit the ground running. I had to employ so many skills that I learned at different points during medical school over the course of my 11 hour shift (I got off a bit early today). I had to do point-of-care ultrasounds by myself, stitch up some guys gnarly facial lacerations, and irrigate someone’s bloody bladder. I got to tell someone they weren’t having a heart attack and I had to tell another person that they likely had cancer. While I was feeling a bit nervous doing all this stuff, once I got started it all came back pretty quickly and definitely was a bit of a confidence boost, like hey I’ve actually learned some stuff and grown over this past year (which is kinda cool because I was at this same site almost exactly a year ago).
While it was a long and busy day, it actually flew by decently quickly. I was constantly doing something and ED note-writing was relatively quick and straightforward (plus they didn’t have me write so many notes today on my first day).
At least with my first taste of it, I’m kinda liking the buzz of the ED and the pace of it. What is a bit hard for me to get used to is seeing the patient and then sending them off, either home or admitting them to the hospital and not really following them in what happens next. I feel like this is something I can get used to but we will see how I feel by the end of these 2 weeks in the ED.
nANIMOv 