Starting MS-3 year!

Wow. Baptism by fire seems to be the rule as a third-year medical student. I've been on my surgery rotation for one week now. Generally, a day now consists of getting up at 4 so I can get ready and walk to Children's by 5:30, review charts and calculate I&Os till about 6:15, rounds with the chief resident or the fellow until a little after 7, then meeting with all of the on-service residents, fellows, and attendings to go over the flow for the day before heading off to the OR a little after 8. Of course, some days the flow is a little different -- there may be pathology conferences or morbidity and mortality (M&M) meetings to attend, or grand rounds, or some other variation. In any case, once everything else is done, the vast majority of the rest of the day is spent in the OR. Most days I spend 8 or 9 hours in there, and I consider it all time well spent. I usually end up leaving between 6 and 7 PM, picking up a new set of scrubs for the next day, and heading back home to eat, sleep, and get ready to do it all over again. The days are long, but the surgeons are beyond terrific (and I'll be honest, I never expected to make that comment about surgeons) and it's been a wonderful experience so far. Funnily enough, the best part of the whole thing (at least to this point) didn't even happen at CHP. After I finished at Children's on Friday (about 11:30 AM), I headed over to Presby for 3 hours worth of lecture. Note to whoever is in charge of the lecture sessions: turning the light off during a lecture filled with sleep-deprived medical students is probably not a good idea. For most of my classmates, once lecture was done for the afternoon, they had to go back to work for a couple of hours before the day ended. Not me. Instead, I faced one of the many rites of passage of the third year medical student and a true "defining moment": my first overnight call.

Next time: notes on my call night. Till then, peace and God bless!