Category: Medical

We run into a lot of logistical red tape with inpatient medicine (not that outpatient doesn’t have its fair share). Understaffed floors, impacted services making it take an absurd amount of time for a patient to get a simple procedure or study done, papers going here and there, inefficient communication chains. At the end of the day the people who really face the consequences are the patients. How do we make hospitals more efficient? How can we overcome egos (good luck with that in the hospital)? I have some ideas, but I’m still just a lowly medical student and have a lot to learn about the hospital and medical system. But maybe by the time I get to that point I’ll be too jaded and consumed by the system to want to do anything about it.

This morning I felt extra energized after my first real weekend in a while. I even was able to make my coffee instead of getting it at the hospital. When I got there though, idk, the sleepies hit extra hard. Maybe it’s cause my patients right now are kinda sleepers; not much direct management required, and not a lot of patient interaction. Medically they are quite interesting, but just today not much to do and also their diagnoses are pretty slam dunk, not a lot of critical thinking necessary. I find though that sometimes patients will have certain lab abnormalities that I want to work up, but my attending or residents don’t really care about them. Even if exploring them won’t change our management or necessarily help us get them out of the hospital, I’m curious to know the mechanism, and having the freedom to run my own tests would help with that. Alas, these are real people we are dealing with so we can’t just order all the tests and do all the things willy-nilly to see what happens.

But what if there was a virtual environment where you could do that?

TTITF
Fidget toys, book sales, blue light glasses

This team is very, let’s say thorough… which is a good thing, it just usually means we spend a lot of time perseverating on certain medical decisions and/ or teach points. I think it’s been great for my learning, but also it means I’ve been staying at the hospital into later in the day. Also lately I feel like my thought and ideas and contributions have been more entertained than with previous attendings which has been nice. Not sure if it’s because this attending just enjoys teaching and being more hands on or if my suggestions/ thoughts have become more viable, probably a mix of both, but also probably more of the former. But I kinda like just sitting in the room talking about differentials and tests and evidence and stuff.

I feel like I’m breaking out a bit more for the first time in a while. Not sure what it is. If it’s the long days. The lack of sleep (though I’m not sleeping thaaaat much less that usual). The 10+ hours a day in a mask. The internal medicine diet. The stress. Part of me thinks it might be as simple as this new sunscreen I’ve been using that is very oily, but I only put it on when I’m driving home. Maybe it’s a combination. I will say it’s nothing like it was before, but definitely surfaces bad memories (though my scars are already a constant reminder and source of insecurity).

I have an actual weekend coming up, so hopefully that will help clear things up. Or if nothing else help narrow down the etiology.

Definitely been thinking a lot about what I want my future in medicine to look like these past 3 weeks and I feel like I’m getting closer to an answer, but still probably not anywhere close to a definitive answer. Yesterday I ran into the clerkship director of my Ob/Gyn rotation while getting pho and he had a lot of interesting insight.

Last few shifts have been pretty quiet. My patients have been pretty stable, but aren’t quite at the point where they can be discharged. Plus we haven’t really gotten many new ones. Of course though, close to the end of my day a new admit came in from the ED and I was overdue for a new one so I volunteered. Based on the sign-out we got it sound like a pretty straightforward case of angina secondary to coronary artery disease. After taking our own history, it sounded like things may be a little more serious than we thought, but perhaps only slightly and with marginally higher suspicion of something more insidious happening.

Over all, it sounds like a pretty “bread-and-butter” cases as I hear people say so so often, so I’m glad I’m able to take this one on from the very beginning.

It was the last day with one of the interns and with our senior resident, and the first day with a new attending. I really enjoyed the team we had. With it being his last day with us, our senior took us all aside for feedback. I never know what to make of these feedback session. I can never tell if they are saying nice things because they don’t want to hurt my feelings or because it’s easier to say someone did a good job than to actually work with them through some of their deficits. I mean I think I’ve done a decent job, but I also don’t think I’m among the best-of-the-best that have walked these pathogen-ridden halls. At the same time, I don’t mean to suggest that my preceptors care enough about me or care so little about “the future of medicine” as to compromise their integrity. Idk, I want someone to make me cry, or feel like crying. Not because they are being insensitive, but because they make me reckon with my own shortcomings. Third party verification let’s call it. Or maybe it is better this way. And I should just continue forward the best way I know how.

It was a long day today. I feel like our weekend shifts are supposed to be shorter, but for some reason it was exceptionally long. I feel especially bad for the interns who really bore the brunt of the business and kept getting calls. We added like 5 new patients to our list today. Our cap, which we haven’t reached is 16 I think. Not sure how close we got to that today.

But even in the morning I could feel it. I turned off my alarm and closed my eyes for a little, woke up and it was already 5:30 AM and time to go.

When I got home I took a shower and took a 2 hour nap and then it was 8:00 PM.

Tomorrow is my day off 🙂

TTITF
Packed party food, quad-colored pens, cheap basketball shorts

So yesterday I took on a patient who seemed to have pretty severe altered mental status and concern for dementia. We had difficulty communicating with her so it was hard to tell if she was actually impaired or it was just that she was mostly deaf + language barrier. We erred mostly on the side of dementia given her age.

The this morning I was able to have a somewhat coherent conversation with her in my broken Spanish. She asked for my name, and I told her. She was no smiling and very pleasant. I was hoping that this was an indication that she was more with it than we thought. I went back and report the news to my team and we went about our day.

Later on I found out that she had been asking for me by throughout the day. I went to visit her, and she seemed to remember who I was, though maybe was a bit confused about me role. But still that made me feel good.

I need it to because I feel like I’ve been really flubbing on my presentation and my clinical decision making. My assessment have been all over the place and my plans overridden. It’s part of the learning processes, but also chances are, based on how evaluations are structured, these mistakes will effect my grade, ultimately playing a role in whether I match or not. This is something I historically have not been taking as seriously as I should, and it’s hard for me to take it seriously based on my philosophy towards learning, which is maybe a lame excuse, but that’s not something that it so easily changed (I know because I used to be on the opposite end of the spectrum).

TTITF:
Happy memories, friends who are as uncool as I am, popcorn chicken

Up to this point, there are certain cases that for me only lived in board exam practice questions and lectures. Elder abuse was one of them. When the admission came in we were told there was some concern for neglect, but I really didn’t anticipate the extent to which it turned out to be and the potentially malicious nature of what may be going on. When I was actually able to get a seemingly reliable account of what was going on, it was heartbreaking. It almost didn’t feel real as I was asking question to the witness and hearing their account.

People can be scary.

TTITF:
(1) My supportive IM team, (2) comfort food (Taco Bell specifically), (3) language interpreters