I’ve been pretty bad about staying up to date with this, and in general using my time after getting out of the hospital to do any kind of meaningful reflection which I feel like has taken a toll on me in various ways that are hard to quantify.
The rest of my MICU rotation was pretty good though. I actually liked the overall operation of the ICU. I liked the complexity of patients that came through and management of drips and vents, while still having to pay attention to the standard internal medicine things like blood sugars and electrolytes. I expected to be more dissatisfied with the aspect of not getting to see patients to discharge, but in most cases there was a sense of completion. Either the patient was stabilized enough to transfer to the lower acuity floors or to another hospital, or even in some cases be discharged directly from the ICU (in some cases they were basically stable enough to go home from the ICU after being super sick but stayed a few more days on the floor for monitoring or other reasons, or in the other unfortunate case they would pass while in the ICU. It is a lot of training though, but it does seem like something I could be interested in in the future.
This experience also makes me curious about the pediatric ICU, the things I’ll see and the types of conversations I’ll have.
nANIMOv 