And the year goes on...
I am so glad IM is over.
That's not to say I didn't enjoy it. I kinda did. It was nice working on teams that worked well together, learned from each other, and ran smoothly. I liked most of the patients that I had, they were good learning experiences not just from a medical standpoint but from a psychosocial view as well. Some were more complicated than others, but that's where the interns came in. Overall, I liked it, but after 6 weeks of it, I was starting to feel the burnout. And my workload was nothing compared to the 7-9 patients the inters were carrying. My max was 3, and it was rare that I hit that number. There was little time to study when I got home because I was so tired, it was futile to even try.
My first month was at UCDMC, the 2nd at the VA. The system's changed so there is no overnight call, which is good and bad. It's good that you get to go home at the end of the day, but bad in that after you admit a patient, you sign off to another team for the night and don't get to see firsthand what progress is made in the first 12 hours of their admission. There is also less time for teaching from the residents and attendings. I understand the reasoning, to make sure we're not overworked and making bad decisions and getting into car accidents, but I guess people have to adapt to the new system and get in as much teaching as possible in the new timeframe.
It was different at the VA, where it was 7a-7p sharp. This was where I was feeling the burnout, because there isn't much else to study at the end of the day, since I had to sleep early to make it in on time the next day. It was nice in that their EMR is all computerized, there's no handwriting to translate, you can write orders from anywhere, and the load is a little lighter. It's definitely not as diverse as UCDMC since it's mostly men. But there were some interesting cases here too.
No one died on our service, but a patient of mine died about a week after discharge and and I'd moved on to the VA. It was weird when I clicked on the chart and it popped up, "Warning! you are entering the chart of a deceased patient." It came as a bit of a shock, but I knew that he/she was on the way to death given how bad the CT scan looked and the symptoms; it was just odd it was that quick soon after we took care of him/her.
Anyway, so medicine is possibly in the running. We'll see how psych goes; I'm on the consult service and then the Sac County inpatient hospital. And it'll be nice to have glorious weekends again, not this 1-day-off-a-week crap. That is what really got to me too, so much so that by the end of the week, I couldn't tell you what day of the week it was because I was so burnt out and disoriented.
That's not to say I didn't enjoy it. I kinda did. It was nice working on teams that worked well together, learned from each other, and ran smoothly. I liked most of the patients that I had, they were good learning experiences not just from a medical standpoint but from a psychosocial view as well. Some were more complicated than others, but that's where the interns came in. Overall, I liked it, but after 6 weeks of it, I was starting to feel the burnout. And my workload was nothing compared to the 7-9 patients the inters were carrying. My max was 3, and it was rare that I hit that number. There was little time to study when I got home because I was so tired, it was futile to even try.
My first month was at UCDMC, the 2nd at the VA. The system's changed so there is no overnight call, which is good and bad. It's good that you get to go home at the end of the day, but bad in that after you admit a patient, you sign off to another team for the night and don't get to see firsthand what progress is made in the first 12 hours of their admission. There is also less time for teaching from the residents and attendings. I understand the reasoning, to make sure we're not overworked and making bad decisions and getting into car accidents, but I guess people have to adapt to the new system and get in as much teaching as possible in the new timeframe.
It was different at the VA, where it was 7a-7p sharp. This was where I was feeling the burnout, because there isn't much else to study at the end of the day, since I had to sleep early to make it in on time the next day. It was nice in that their EMR is all computerized, there's no handwriting to translate, you can write orders from anywhere, and the load is a little lighter. It's definitely not as diverse as UCDMC since it's mostly men. But there were some interesting cases here too.
No one died on our service, but a patient of mine died about a week after discharge and and I'd moved on to the VA. It was weird when I clicked on the chart and it popped up, "Warning! you are entering the chart of a deceased patient." It came as a bit of a shock, but I knew that he/she was on the way to death given how bad the CT scan looked and the symptoms; it was just odd it was that quick soon after we took care of him/her.
Anyway, so medicine is possibly in the running. We'll see how psych goes; I'm on the consult service and then the Sac County inpatient hospital. And it'll be nice to have glorious weekends again, not this 1-day-off-a-week crap. That is what really got to me too, so much so that by the end of the week, I couldn't tell you what day of the week it was because I was so burnt out and disoriented.
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