ok ok - I know it's only day 2 - but so far I'm loving 3rd year. Also, I am probably lucky to start in a family medicine office. I worked from 8-5 today with probably a 15 minute lunch break and... I loved every minute of it.
There are always interesting findings even with a routine physical exam. I truly enjoy just going in and talking with patients. Everyone has an interesting story or history - that they all want to share in addition to whatever is ailing them. And if they are coming in for a routine physical and pretty much everything is normal - that feels good. It's great to see healthy people, because we are surrounded by so much illness and disease in the hospital.
It's hard for me to describe the high lights of my day - because I feel like what I find exciting and interesting is probably not so exciting and interesting by your standards. Today I froze off 2 warts, saw a case of probable gallstones that was textbook. There is a mneumonic for gallstones - the 4 F's - Female, Forty, Fat and Fertile. My patient today was 39, female, I would say pudgy not fat and I'm going to guess still fertile. It's amazing that some of the stuff we learned from the books was right. In a way I feel like I'm learning all over again - starting from scratch.
This is why I went into medicine - to see patients everyday, to interact with them and carry on various conversations on a variety of topics and to help them in whatever way possible.
Sometimes that's just listening. I had a new supervising doc for part of the day Dr. K. and one of her patients came in with a chief complaint of neck / shoulder pain - once she got in there she realized that all she really wanted was an outlet to tell her problems.
Ok - time for me to read a little and then hit the hay! I'm exhausted, but it's a good tired.
Interesting article I read this morning while eating b-fast - in case you're interested
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/jamesreynolds/2008/07/a_tale_of_two_beijings.html
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