Thursday, February 6, 2014

"Oh that is not necessary. We aren't the surgeons!" Day 4 Peds Ward

Oh it's been quite a long but good day. Let me get yall caught up.

I really must say that I enjoy showing up for work at 8:15 apposed to 7am. It is a world of a difference. Not every specialty has that luxury however.

We got a few new kids over night and I was appointed a kid that apparently fell and hit its head. I looked at the admissions report and headed in with the resident to interview the parents and child and do a physical examination. He was up and doing just fine. After a thorough questioning, we examined him and had him do all kinds of neurological tests. It's fun in peds because you often have to demonstrate what you want the kids to do so not only does the patient look like a fool but so does the doctor jumping around on one foot.

Rounds went a little longer today because we had multiple things to organize for some of the kids. I like rounds though. I think its because of the great team on the ward. Everybody is allowed to say something without having the feeling that you are constantly criticized or only there to observe.
 
(A little more neutral today but I have my zebra phone!)

By the time we got around to my patient, I presented his case to the attending with ease. Granted a patient that fell doesn't have the most difficult case to report on but it still feels awesome to just throw out a good report and get positive feedback!

After rounds I worked on finishing my doctors letter. We got a whole bunch of new findings back from the lab that I didn't even notice it being 11:30 already and time for the morning meeting. I ran up the two flights of stairs only to enter the room almost empty with a few other students in the last row. Everybody else was just starting to arrive.

I've mentioned the situation with seating arrangements in the hospital before. In the surgical departments, the students are the ones that sit way in the back...always. It is quite the faux pas to sit in the row where the residents or even worse the attendings sit (although I accidentally did that my first elective). The pediatric doctors are much more relaxed about it but at this point, we students are so drilled in finding that spot furthest away from the front. Later in the day, I got up from my seat to move back in a MRI findings meeting when some doctors walked in and some students and I had taken up a row. The doctor was almost shocked at my action and said, "Oh that is not necessary. We aren't the surgeons!" Thought that was sweet.

(I need at lease one of these a day. Very fitting I think)


After a quick lunch, I was back on the ward putting my final touches on the letter. When the resident sat down to go through it with me, I was afraid she would think it was terrible. She even started the conversation saying she is a total grammar control freak. Greeeeeeeat. 

In the end though, I really did a good job. There were only minor things here and there that she wanted formulated differently. All in all though, we didn't change much. Yay! Might sound stupid that I am so happy about that but I am not afraid to say that one of my weaknesses is the German grammar (I'm sure enough people reading this are cringing at my English grammar as well). German is hard! 

I interviewed and examined another patient with the same resident from earlier. Another boy that hit his head. He was doing just fine as well. You wouldn't have thought that he was brought into the hospital the night before with the ambulance. Again the same gymnastic routine of neurological tests was performed.

After a bit more work here and there, I was done for the day on the ward. I headed to the library to work on some translation work with another student for an attending in the hospital.

Since my uncle is on vacation, I went and had dinner with my aunt. We went to a very good greek restaurant. We ended up chatting for 2 hours while eating. We had just finished up and were close to leaving when the chef cook came and sat down at our table. We ended up chatting for another 2 hours with the guy! We discussed so many topics and it was interesting how we all contributed stand points from our respective fields. The obvious being good nutrition and medicine. We also discussed the work ethic of people today, differences between countries (since we had representatives from Greece, the USA and Germany at the table), the towns development over the years, TV documentaries....really everything! It was a really nice evening. Now its off to bed though because I have my last day of peds tomorrow and then a night shift. If I'm lucky, I'll get out a bit early and will get a few hours of sleep in.

Baci

V

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