Tuesday . July 2 . 2002 . 10:08pm |
trial by fire Starting a Sub-I is a little like being thrown to the wolves. One moment you're a third-year student, bumbling along, and the next moment, you're a responsible medical professional, or at least putting on a good show of being one. There was no orientation. There was no informational meeting. Just you, the team, and a whole mess of sick kids. And somehow, you're supposed to know what to do. I think I spent all of yesterday pacing the ward in a daze. Today was better. I'm getting up to speed. After eight months of adult medicine, I'm starting to remember what it's like to work with kids again. But I still have these moments of wonder that for the most part, they're so tiny. I can examine a whole abdomen with one hand. If I need to move a patient off the bed, I can just pick him up, no problem, instead of having to get two nurses and a pulley. And guiacs are so much easier when you can just dip into the diaper, instead of jamming that unwelcome finger up the butt to get at the poo. Kids are cute. Kids are fun. Sometimes this makes being their doctor easier. In other respects, working with kids is leagues harder than working with adults. They can't always tell you what's wrong with them. They can't always tell you where it hurts. They cry a lot. Parents are traumatized and hysterical. Even drawing bloods and starting IVs is a major ordeal, with tiny little veins and thrashing infants. Want to send an adult down for an MRI? Send them on down. Send a kid down to MRI, and you often have to sedate them, because no way there's going to hold still for half an hour while they're fed into some huge, whirring tube. And it's scary when kids get sick. Sometimes it's really, really scary. Kids shouldn't get sick right? Kids don't die, right? But sometimes they do. For the most part, the kids I'm working with now really aren't all that ill. I'm on the Peds General Medicine team, which means I'm seeing a lot of patients with diarrhea, vomiting, dehydration, and asthma. You know, bread and butter stuff. It's taking me some time, but I feel like I'm gradually getting up to speed. Since I'm still a student, I have to get all my orders and scripts co-signed, and of course I still run everything by my senior to make sure I'm not going to make some boneheaded mistake that will kill someone. But on the whole, there's a lot of autonomy, and a lot of responsibility. I'm really enjoying myself so far. Of course, I have overnight call tomorrow, so this may all change. xo Michelle |
