Good grief...I'm already a third of the way done with third year! Normally I would be ecstatic, but for the first time in my life I'm feeling that just knowing enough to get through the days and get through the tests is not sufficient. Not all that long from now my knowledge (or lack thereof) could really make a difference in someone's life. Sure there should always be some doctor around I can ask for help throughout residency, but a good part of the responsibility lies with me...and I just don't know how I can learn all I need to know in the time I have left. Perhaps I'm prematurely freaking out (that's what I do), but it has inspired me to focus on the most practical skills that can make a huge difference in a crunch...you can always stop and look up a biochemical pathway, but if someone has a tension pneumothorax they need it fixed NOW.
It's a relief to be done with my surgical rotation (assuming I passed that damn test) and move on from ophthalmology. I learned quite a bit in that month...but I wasn't really inspired to pursue it further. Incredible things are being done in ophthalmology (Burst of Technology Helps Blind To See) but the only other surgery I saw on my rotation was a medial wall orbital fracture repair where the patient went in with fine vision and extraocular motion and post-op he couldn't move his eye properly. That's not cool. Sometimes doctors must inflict a little pain to solve a problem, but it's generally not great when we take an almost non-issue and make the problem much worse.
I'm super excited about my peds rotation! I'm down in Bloomington for the rest of the month and I'll even be working with my pediatrician part of the time (hope that's not too weird). Here's hoping I avoid this whole H1N1 mess.
No comments:
Post a Comment