TV Medicine

2nd day of inpatient internal medicine (adult medicine) down. Day 1 was ok, went by relatively quickly. I was lost most of the time and was almost assigned to a patient who was an ex-prisoner and had voluminous amounts of diarrhea. Instead today, I have been assigned to a patient in contact isolation due to possible infection with methicillin resistant staphlycoccus aureus (MRSA) and another patient under Tuberculosis (TB) precautions. What fun!

I also - feel like I'm acting in a TV medical show or playing the part of a med student in a movie. The team I am on consists of an attending (the boss lady), 2 senior residents, 3 interns (1st year residents) and 2 students (myself included). My day goes: 6am arrive at hospital, pre-round on the patients - which consists of visiting your patients, checking for any lab work or studies done since yesterday, examining the patient, and writing a note. 8am morning lecture. 9am rounds - go around to the entire team's patient's (not just my own) with the attending and visit all the patient's again. 12pm - lunch. 1-5 continue rounding if necessary, get pimped, etc. We walk about as a posse of 8. Most of the time 7 of us quickly walking to try and catch up to the attending or a handful of us searching for the patient's chart who we are about to see.

It's not quite as bad as it seems, but I do feel like I've been placed on set. Scrubs, House, etc. My attending is really nice - even though she pimped us today. My senior residents are even better, they occasionally whispered or mouthed an answer to me. I was assigned homework tonight, but that's ok.
That's my day for the next month - shuffling about the hospital.
I'll also be learning a lot. These patients have multiple problems going on all at once and have med lists that are the length of my arm! There's still a part of me that is excited to be on my medicine rotation. I'm hoping that all of the stuff I learned last year will finally start to stick.

Next time on "It's all craziness" - the weight of my white coat and all the things that hide in my pockets!