So yesterday marked the end of my 2 weeks on my Junior elective that I of course decided to do in Orthopedics. I had so much fun during these 2 weeks that I am absolutely sure now that I want to be an orthopedic surgeon. Here is how my week went:
3/29- It was my first day with the program director here at LLU and I of course was a tad bit nervous since I didn’t do too well when I worked with him for one day during my actual surgery rotation. I can’t remember if I blogged about this or not but when I worked with him for that one day it was a day of clinic and basically he said that I was going too slow. I also didn’t know where any of the forms were, how to order xrays, how to perform hand exams, or really anything, lol, so yeah I was crawling and he is notorious for really flying through his clinics. So of course I made sure that I got a lot of advice from 4th years on how to make sure that I excelled with the PD and they were definitely spot on. So yeah, my first day with the PD was in his clinic, and since he is a Hand surgeon we basically saw patients with issues from the elbow down to their finger tips. I was definitely more confident about seeing patients, making a diagnosis, getting xrays, writing a plan, etc. Now I had heard that the PD like to exercise during the 2 hours he takes for lunch between his morning and afternoon clinics, and I heard that particularly he enjoyed swimming. Now I am not an amazing an swimmer but besides playing basketball that is something I really enjoy doing so I asked him if he was going to swim again during lunch and he said yes. I told him that I learned how to swim from YouTube and whether he would mind me coming along. He smirked and said sure. Lol, now I know that this could be considered brown nosing, and to be honest it probably was, but I do like swimming, and whats the harm in swimming with the PD? So yeah we went swimming and I actually somewhat kept up with him although he has a lot better endurance than I do. I know now why he exercises during lunch, because I felt so energized during the last half of the day.
Unfortunately, I didn’t really do a good job of keeping up with what I did each day, so I will just summarize it. The first week with the PD was pretty good. I felt like I got increasingly better at seeing a patient, evaluating his or her xrays, and figuring out a management plan. It was really odd though, because the PD didn’t pimp me at all, not one question. He did ask me questions like how long had I been married, what I thought of such and such professor, whether I had started my CV yet, etc. He also asked me basically if I was still planning on going back home for residency which is kind of a hard question for a potential applicant to answer, but I was truthful. I let him know that while I would prefer being home with my family, I would certainly be happy if I matched here, which I thought was important to stress. Even more so than how high you will rank them, a program wants to ensure that you will be happy if you match there. Overall I felt like the PD didnt mind me being around because on the last day, when he went out to lunch with the residency secretary and another resident, he invited me along…so I hope that’s a good sign.
I took call at the LLU medcenter during the first week and it was a really light call…kind of disappointing. Nothing came in at all so the resident sent me home at around midnight. Even though I really wanted to be busy, and learn how to splint and cast under pressure I just didn’t luck out that night. But I”m sure my resident was praising God that he didn’t have another crazy night of being up all night with different ortho cases that came into the ER.
I ended up taking call again over the weekend and the night started out really slow like my first call. Than at around 9:40 p.m. I commented to the resident how I had had really light calls before and that I really wanted some action so that I could get some experience. He looked at me with a somewhat evil eye, and sure enough 10 minutes later his pager went off. We ended up not getting to bed until like 5 a.m. due to multiple supracondylar fractures that came in…all of them in 4 year old boys. So yeah, I was happy for the experience, but I will try to voice my desires internally next time, because that night was crazy!
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