Like a First Year

The last couple days of my mandatory, don’t come and you’ll not graduate, “Doctoring” class are this week. Ah, it’s been an adventure. I’ve learned so much. I’ve come away with a great deal of useful knowledge that wasn’t already learned on the wards or from reading resident’s blogs. I feel like a first year – everything had weight to it, everything was important, and I love being a medical student…but not really.

4 weeks of this class and I really think it could have been condensed into one week. It was very disappointing – it had a great deal of potential, but as usual we’ve been led astray. At least I was able to catch up with some of my classmates and hear about where they’d like to be going.

Despite this farcical educational process, I did learn a couple of important items:

1) Sipping caffeinated drinks over an hour will keep you going longer than if you chug. Caffeine downregulates itself and if consumed in large quantities (as I’m wont to do when on call) it actually diminishes sooner, leaving you dead tired in 1-2 hours. Good to know.

2) Get through the first day and you’ll be OK. Expect to be on call – many interns start out on call.

3) OB/GYN residents (at least here) are very pessimistic.

4) Money scares the hell out of me – at least knowing what to do with it outside of paying off stuff.

5) You will get very depressed – most likely in the winter months.

6) Discharge planning starts at the time of admission – and sucks ass.

7) Government funded healthcare has already suffered from poor resources and funding – so why do we think that we can cover everyone?

And that’s about it. Aside from learning that a couple people are matching into specialties that I didn’t ever think they’d go into and getting the final touches on my case report done so that it can actually get published this month has been a waste. At least I don’t have to take senior Psychiatry!