It seems like I have so many different things in my life that come in concrete stages of time like 6 weeks, 12 weeks or 1 year. And it's not going to change any time soon. I'm one week into my medicine rotation at Harborview and I'm really liking it a lot. This is my new home for 6 weeks:
It is different than I expected but in a good way--I expected it to be an intimidating atmosphere where I would feel like a fool but it's quite the contrary! I couldn't be more grateful for the team I was put on. I'm working with:
- one of my classmates, Tara
- a senior resident, mike who is a UWmed school grade
- two interns (aka 1st year residents)
- an attending physician, Dr. Dellit who is an infectious disease specialist.
They are all so incredibly enthusiastic, ready to teach, ready to learn and ready to support! It's been a kind of "slow" week in terms of how many patients are on our service but if I learned anything from scribing in Tacoma, I know never to call it slow because then you're just asking for it.Oh, and here's the "first day" photo that Tom made me promise to take:
My typical day is:
6:30 AM - pre-round on my patient (for now it's just one little patient, but as I get better and more confident I'll "earn" the privilege of caring for more. I read over their chart, talk to the nurses about if/what happened over night and check in with the patients and do a quick physical exam.
7:30 AM - rounds with the team. We go around and see each patient and discuss the plan for the day.
9ish-10 AM - work in the team room to put in orders on the computer for our patients, call consulting physicians, etc.
10-11AM - Morning report, a teaching session where we go over recent cases, discuss what could have been done better, go through a differential diagnosis, etc
11 - 12:30 - continue to work on putting in orders/dealing wtih patient issues as well as charting everything we are doing
12:30 - 1:30 - lunch conference. We get fed (amazing!) and we get a great one hour lecture. The topics vary widely but it's always fascinating.
1:30-3 PM continue patient care
3 - 4 PM The medical students have various teachign sessions, either physical exam tutorials, dermatology rounds (where we get to see/learn about interesting skin conditions) or just another hour long teaching session of varied topics
4 - until whenever (depends on the day) continue patient care, charting, discussing patients, etc.
We are on a 5 day rotating schedule where my team will admit patients up until 5 pm on "short call" days, then up until 7 pm on "long call" days. I'm still working to figure out how it all works, but suffice it to say, it's a very fluid schedule without any real set "show up' or "leave" times, which is exactly what I expected. I have no pictures from patient interactions obviously but I can say
that I've gotten to see some things that just don't happen anywhere but
at Harborview.
But, when I do leave the hospital, I have one quick stop I always have to make: my garden! It's my haven, really an oasis for me to get away, even if it's just for 15 minutes!
I inherited a plot from someone who had to leave suddenly so I got to have some established plants as well as some space for new growth.
This is what it looked like the day I inherited it
And here's the "after shot" once I transplanted a few things, weeded, added some new soil, expanded the space a little beyond the raised beds, watered and put up a trellace for the snap peas to grow on:
Here's a video snap shot of my plot.
I was so spoiled to get an already established plot given my time constraints--I go to harvest on my first day!
And, the gardeners are all so wonderful--I got to take home two gorgeous zucchini today from the generous gardener next to me.And, one of my sunflowers started to bloom:
I was worried that the seeds I planted wouldn't have enough time to get established before the end of the summer but I'm hopeful because literally 6 days after planting they are already 1.5 inches tall (can't tell from this photo, but these are my green beans)
Last night was particularly beautiful. I was captured by the beauty of the skyline with the silhouettes:
Here's to another week of learning!
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