So on Wednesday I took my oral exams and my OSCE for OBGYN and on Friday I took the national shelf exam for OBGYN. The orals and OSCE that took place on Friday went relatively well. They gave us a list of 35 cases that we could be tested over for our oral exams and we wouldn’t find out which one we had until we arrived at the testing site. They also told us what our 3 OSCE exams would be over so technically it shouldn’t have been very stressful, but I was doing alot during this rotation between being a 3rd year med student on OBGYN and working on my research project that it was hard for me to study as well as I wanted to for these tests. On the actual testing day I found out that my oral exams would be over 1) postpartum bleeding 2) infertility 3) adnexal masses 4) rh isoimmunization. When I saw that I had adnexal masses my sympathetic system kicked up because that was the one case that I knew the least and it definitely showed when the attendings running the oral exams were questioning me. I think I did well on the other cases. For the OSCEs (where we had to interview paid actors about their Obgyn complaints) I actually wasn’t ranked very high as compared to my other classmates. But their comments were positive so I don’t really know what do say; here is what they said:
* Birth Control OSCE: DoctaJay has a very nice, friendly type of personality. As his patient I felt very comfortable and at ease talking with him. He seems knowledgeable and informed and knows how to relate information to his patient. Nice level of self-confidence. Needs to ask more history of his patient, but otherwise a nice interview.
* Painful Menstrual Period OSCE: The student did an excellent job of easily explaining the medical terms he was using in his description-also very easy to talk to/very conversational.
* Menopause OSCE: He gave me alot of information which was good but at times I felt a little unsure about some of the things he was talking about…he ran some of the things he was talking about together. Plus their was a lot of construction noise going on while he was talking
So the general gist I got from the comments was that I was easy to talk to and friendly but I needed to take their history a little better. I really do hope to get better in this respect. The national OBGYN shelf exam I took on Friday wasn’t terribly hard but I was just honestly tired of studying at the time so I didn’t cover everything I needed to as my times as I needed to cover it. I finished on time (praise God) but I am really not sure how I did. At LLU, the shelf exam makes up 40% of our OBGYN grade and the rest is made up of our OSCE, oral exams, attending evals, and resident evals. I won’t know whether I got honors or not until the whole school year is done and they look at all the people in my class and how I ranked against them.
I also decided to go on call with the ortho residents on Friday and I feel like I got a very good feel of what it was like to be a 2nd year resident, even the amount of hours they work. So after being up since 4 a.m. on Friday morning studying for the shelf exam and not taking a nap after since I don’t know how to take naps when it is bright outside, I went into the hospital around 6:30 p.m. at night. The PGY-2 that was on call was really cool and he taught me how to monitor the ER board (so that we could know about the patients that they would page us about before they paged us), write up a consult note, evaluate the patient, write ortho admit orders, write ortho discharge orders, etc. I also was able to appreciate a little more how the orthopedic service worked. I had always been told that I would never get any sleep as an ortho resident because you get slammed all night, even as an attending but what I found was not the case. As a PGY-2 you definitely do most of the grunt work by getting all the pages from the ED, seeing them, and admitting them if necessary. However if you are a PGY-3, PGY-4, or PGY-5 you take home call, and you only come in if the PGY-2 admits a patient that needs to be operated on immediately. And technically there aren’t very many trauma cases that need to be operated on immediately. Some do like pelvic fractures (risk of bleeding out is high), some spine fractures, septic knees and septic hips (risk of the joint getting destroyed by the infection). And if you have a good senior resident the attending barely has to do much either which is pretty cool.
The types of cases that came in too were pretty cool because they were basically all pediatric cases. We had one kid that had a septic hip, another kid who broke his femur when he took a jump on his motorbike that he couldn’t handle, we had a little girl with a supracondylar fracture from falling off a chair and some other cool cases. Overall I realized from the experience that you shouldn’t look at the life of the resident to see whether the lifestyle is what you want because residency sucks for everyone. Instead you should look at the lifestyle of the attending and take into consideration whether the attending specializes in trauma or not because that could skew your view a little. I am honestly getting more and more excited about orthopedcs because the treatments are often extremely definitive and the patients are often better off after you help them.
As excited however as I am getting about orthopedics I am a little concerned about the fact that many of the programs have their interviews on the Sabbath, particularly the programs in the MD/VA/DC area. In my heart I honestly do not feel comfortable with going to a residency interview on the Sabbath, but another side of me is saying that what is the difference because as a resident I will definitely be working on the Sabbath. But I feel that interviewing on the Sabbath is more so to help myself, while working as a resident on the Sabbath is to help someone else in need. I know its early to be thinking about this but maybe not, because it may not make sense to even apply somewhere if I know that they won’t interview me on any other day but Saturday. I just need to trust God more that He can open doors for me that don’t require me to break the Sabbath.
Don’t pigeonhole God bro…if He wants you to be in the MD/VA/DC area He’ll work out the interview situation…that’s nothing for Him bro…just keep doing what you’re doing and He’ll work out all the other little details…
Hello,
I stumbled upon your blog today and was particularly interested in your “Doctor Shadowing” post a several years ago. I would like to start off by saying that I am extremely interested in becoming a medical missionary in the future as well hence the reason why I browsed through your blog for a few hours
I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind sharing your experiences as an undergrad b/c I am currently an undergrad struggling to look for shadowing opportunities.
Also, you were talking about Georgetown and Washington, D.C. in your “Doctor Shadowing” post and was wondering if you’re from/currently in this area?
Your experiences in medical school are very interesting and I hope to hear from you very soon!
Hi Mihae. My experience with doctor shadowing in undergrad was mostly related to doing summer research at different institutions. In the mornings I would be in the lab, and at night I would be shadowing doctors in the hospital. The doctor shadowing I got to do was a blessing and it all started with me just asking the research secretary whether she knew anyone in the hospital that I could shadow. For you, I think the key is the find a resident physician to shadow as these are the backbone of the hospital and they are always working. It may be difficult at first but if you show diligence you can find someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows a resident doc who will let you shadow them. And to answer your question yes I am from the MD/DC area.