Monday, July 22, 2013

Position awkward

I remember looking at interns and residents with awe, and thinking I will not be able to do that. Presenting 10 patients, putting in orders, reassuring families, coming up with a plan as the attending pimps you in front of the crowd while everyone stares at you like you're some bearded lady in a freak show. 

Then I became an intern, and honestly as bad as it is, it's not THAT bad (usually). The most annoying thing is being annoyed with good intentions of other people. For example, you're trying to get your trillion tasks accomplished and a nurse who is 3 times your age comes and serenades you with some psychosocial issue. You try not to appear annoyed, as she probably will take that as you being a disrespectful petulant child, but the frustration is overpowering sometimes and unavoidable. It's never personal obviously. It's only that you as an intern have 15 other issues vying for your attention that you need to get accomplished in an X amount of time, yet appearing annoyed or frustrated will potentially make your life harder in the long run if said employee takes it personally. After all she could be your grandmother. So you smile and nod politely which only encourages more in depth conversation which you really have no time for. 

The Rubick's cube of human interaction = resident. You're sandwiched between parents who expect you to know things, the attendings who think you know nothing, the nurses who know the hospital infrastructure inside and out and the medical students who keep asking you questions that you once knew and now can't remember. 


KD


Monday, July 15, 2013

Tooling around

The most obnoxious thing about being an intern is carrying a ridiculous amount of office supplies with you. On a daily basis this is what I must schlepp with me from room to room when pre-rounding and rounding all day.

1.) A stethoscope (obviously.)
2.) Black pens. These MUST be black if you deal with paper charts.
3.) Multi colored pens (to eliminate the confusion of the ADD-ness of this profession when you're pulled in fifteen different directions as you're trying to place orders, draw blood, talk to a family, and write a discharge simultaneously.)
4.) Maxwell's (pocket sized handbook of random equations and lab values)
5.) A Maxwell's knockoff of the hospital's preferred regulations on how to calculate things like TPN (total parenteral nutrition... for the nonmedicals I won't get too much into it, but basically how to calculate a form of nutrition that is provided through an IV)
5.) prescription pads
6.) a potpourri of passwords stored on a color coded piece of paper and always inconveniently inaccessible when one needs it most
7.) A reflex hammer, a pen light (I fail in this on a regular basis)
8.) Forms. For everything: meds, blood bank, labwork, nontraditional labwork, nontraditional meds only supplied by a random underground facility in the North Pole... you get the picture.
9.) a Phone
10.) a pager
11.) and last but certainly not least, meal cards.

I am convinced that one of the rites of passage of becoming a good intern is to be cool about carrying all this without fumbling and dropping half of the items in the process. However, to help you get there... these things are amazing:

They're called storage clipboards and this particular one is a Saunders Deskmate. Changed my life (and enhanced my nerd status dramatically, but at least it reduced the awkward fumbling).

Laters,
KidDoctor


Sunday, July 14, 2013

what day is it?

No time to breathe.

I need an infusion of a concoction of Adderall + caffeine + redbull 24/7. Will be back when I have >24hrs off work. Til then I'll be catching up on sleep for 14 of those and binging on large amounts of calories for the other 10.

Maxed out on credit cards. Student loan payments accumulating. Paycheck in 3 days. I need a sugardaddy to save me.