Emergency medicine has been a let down for me. Despite the fact that I'm practicing medicine, I feel more like a medical student on this rotation than I did when I was a medical student. I have to get everything checked out by my attending and make sure they approve, which is part of the learning process, but it takes a long time. I feel like I could be so much more useful, but at the same time feel like I am taking up too much of their valuable time with overseeing my patients also, that I'm afraid I am making more work for them.
I don't have any earth shattering revelations for this last week, as it seems like it is the 'same shit, different day'. I'm now very thankful that I withdrew my bid for an emergency medicine residency, while I know it might be more exciting if I was training for ER singularly, but I still am allowed to do the same things, there are just too many more people available who could do it better, so I often am not asked to do it.
Skills checklist: I can sew, dammit. I love suturing! I can make destroyed faces look pretty again (at least when I'm done with them, haha), I can semi-reattach digits (as long as they are neurovascularly intact--big word to mean that blood flow and sensation are still there), I can pull gaping wounds back together, all this usually better than my attendings. I have an eye for detail and spatial relationships that one of my surgery trainers told me you either have or you don't and I have it. He actually encouraged me to go into surgery, but NO WAY! I am too old to do a surgical residency and I would never see my lovely boys! As much fun as putting things together is, I get serious palpitations when I have to think about cutting something big apart. I can take off moles and such, no biggie, but when I think of cutting into someones abdomen and taking an organ out...huge bats fly around my belly! I believe with repetition comes confidence, but I also believe a healthy dose of fear makes you a better doctor. That way you aren't forgetting that you don't know it all.
Anyway, this is a short update, just a blurb really. I am just so happy that I'm coming into my own. I love where I'm at with my life. More comfortable in my skin (although 3 free meals a day from the residency program is making my skin feel a little tighter :() I am thinking about some purple and/or blue highlights for the month of October. My hair will be under a surgical hat most days and my stylist swears she can put it in so that if I part my hair a certain way, it'll be hidden. What do you think?
YOU ARE READING
Confessions of an Intern
Non-FictionThese are musings of mine, told as I grow through residency. I hope to share a little insight into the making of a doctor, one who still cannot believe she's been blessed with this responsibility.
