Medical ICU – Day 8

It was an eventful day. I got to help out a bit with an emergent chest tube for a pneumothorax which I never had seen before. Though the circumstance under which this occurred were not ideal (there was a breakdown in communication that lead to rapid worsening of the patient’s existing pneumothorax which we were already treating). Today was also my last day with the attending who has been on since I started in the ICU. I liked him a lot as an attending, he was super patient and encouraging with all of us and really made it a point to teach and also give us autonomy with out patients. Being my last day working with him we did feedback. He said I did a good job and was surprised that this was my first ICU rotation and said I was working at the level of a first or second year resident, which felt good even though he was probably being generous. That said I do think I’ve come a long way from where I once was. I definitely have a lot more confidence than I did a year ago. Whether that confidence is proportional to growth in my clinical ability is a whole other story.