Sebaceous cyst is the most common swelling that I have seen in surgery so far. Luckily, I was a part of a surgery were we dissected the cyst. I was with the patient from day she entered the ER room, until the day she was discharged. I started off my internship program with surgery and I have four months to grasp it all.
Two years back, if you asked me what I thought of studying for my post graduation, I would have never uttered surgery. But for the past one month, I keep asking myself why I never studied surgery as keenly as I did for Medicine or other subjects for my boards.
Working or being a part of something that you studied for your boards have really helped me stay motivated, even if it takes 6 hrs to finish in an Operation, just to hold a retractor or a sucker. Staying in my room for almost 4 months and trying to be a memorizer queen has finally paid off. But I keep asking my seniors why we could not mix the clinical years of study with internship?
Most of my work, as Christina Yang (a character in Grays Anatomy) would say is scut work, involves writing history, discharge notes, removing drains and cutting stitches. Basically being the junior most, who gets pushed around by seniors!
I have never been so busy. There are shifts, rounds, follow ups, dressing and even more OT assistance and have ER duty once in a month. So I am physically not available in room as I used to. I spend so much time in the hospital that makes me less assessable to wander in my thoughts and blog about it.
I had an unusual experience today, which helped me remember how much, blogging helped me overcome that. I was more close to patients when I was in med school. when I blogged as a med student, I had less time to spend with them and today I have to be in charge of 14-20 everyday. Being close to patients by describing how their experience was magical for me and I missed that.
“Patients are like babies, they need my constant attention, and they need to know that I am there for them all around the clock, even when I am the junior most and a learner, they are my babies until they get discharged.” And without writing the above statement in my blog, I forget how to handle patients. And as of today, I promise to write more heart touching tales from my journey in Internship.
Few days back someone in my twitter account said that, I quote, “I look for compassion when I hire my doctors” and I just bluntly replied with” med schools don’t teach that” and the respondent agreed and I decided to consider compassion to be a mixture of empathy and being able to enjoy what you do all day long.
Thank you folks and stay tuned for more blog updates!