There are so many things to write about, I just need to get started blogging again. During the day when I'm bored during a surgery or something, I daydream about interesting moments and revelations that I want to share, but then I get home, make dinner and go to bed without sharing my epiphanies. So until they come back to me, I thought it might be of interest to share what a somewhat typical schedule on my new rotation, Colorectal Surgery, is like:
4:30 am Press the snooze button.
4:39 am Press the snooze button again.
4:48 am Freak out and jump out of bed.
5:06 am Try to shove some food in my bag, feed Gracie, get my scrubs and white coat on, remember my cell phone and pager and make it out the door by
5:15 am Walk to work.
5:30 am Go to the desk on the floor and start "skeletonizing" notes, which means filling out this three page form about every patient with their diagnosis, operation, physical exam areas (general, cardiovascular, respiratory, abdominal, extremities) and the assessment and plan. I usually do about 10 of these.
6:00 am Start "rounds" with the fellow or the chief resident. This is where we go to each patient room and ask questions, do a brief physical exam, and I furiously try to complete the note and write down the plan for the day. We also have to carry around a bag of dressing supplies and help change the dressings over patients' wounds.
7:00 am Round with the attending. I usually leave before this is over to try to get to the OR on time
7:20 am Go down to the pre-operative area and meet the patient and try to help the patient get back to surgery on time.
7:30 am With the anesthesiologist, take the first patient back to the room. I help the nurses and resident in any way I can to get the patient on the table and prepped.
This part varies a lot based on what type of surgeries I'm assigned to. Basically I scrub in the surgeries and help in any way the surgeons let me, such as suctioning, cutting sutures after they tie them, and other such things. In between surgeries I have about 15 minutes to meet the next patient, try to eat something and use the restroom. The motto of surgery is "eat when you can, pee when you can, sleep when you can." I also use this extensive period of time to read about the diseases that my patients have so that I can attempt to answer the questions I'm asked during the surgeries...
5:30-6:30 pm Finish up in the OR (the ORs actually use the time 17:30, which is also how the clocks were in France, and I kind of like this system because you don't have to write am and pm all the time. I digress...)
5:30 pm Go back to the floor and check in with the interns who have been there all day managing the patients. Do whatever they ask of you. When you want to go home, you're supposed to ask, "Is there anything else I can help you with?" and I'm typically disappointed when they say yes. :P I help write discharge summaries for patients that might be discharged the next day and do other sort of clerical type work that helps out my team, and then when they tell me to go, I ski-daddle!
6:30 pm Make dinner, usually eating a snack while it cooks because I'm so hungry by this point. Watch TV.
7:30 pm Study dutifully for an hour. Hah. If you believe me then you must not be in medical school.
9-10 pm Pass out.
The end! Sleep, eat and repeat.
