A Day in the Life of a Med Student

Bobby is now a third year med student- wahoo! Classes are over and rotations have begun (I like to call it "playing doctor"). :) For the next 4 weeks he will be at Chestnut Hill Hospital on a General Surgery rotation. Yesterday was only Day 2 on the "job", but it was anything but uneventful. Let me fill you in on some highlights of his day:

During a colonoscopy with a patient who had a highly infectious disease (I'm not sure how much detail I'm allowed to put here for patient privacy?? Let's just say this patient had something that you definitely don't want to get)- anyways, while the attending surgeon was injecting medication into the patient the needle broke and sprayed the medication everywhere. Of course my husband was standing right next to him and got sprayed all over. The likelihood of contracting anything is about one in a bajillion, but just to be safe and to follow procedure the nurses and doctors sent Bobby down to the ER to have his eyes flushed out (some got on his glasses) and to have some blood tests done. Everything looks fine and we're not worried about anything. Of course when he called me to tell me what happened I almost burst into tears, but I blame that more on my preggie hormones than anything else. I feel fine now. :)

Later in the day the chief resident was giving assignments to the students to do with the other residents. Someone needed a surgical consult (for something, I can't remember what), so Bobby volunteered for that one (because the chief resident said it would be "quick and easy"). He started to follow the resident, assuming he was going to the consult as well, but it turns out that he wanted Bobby to do it by himself!! He gave Bobby a quick list of specific questions to ask and sent him on his way. Bobby spent 20 minutes going over the patient's chart, then went into the room to start the consult (sweating bullets, no doubt). Immediately after he introduced himself and told the patient why he was there, the patient's daughter said, "This is the first time we've heard of this procedure. Are you sure you have the right room?" Sure enough, he was in the wrong room. He found the correct patient and the correct room and proceeded with the consult as scheduled. Good thing they give students lots of training and practice before they ship them off to be real doctors. But maybe that's why they call it "practicing medicine"- because you're always practicing and getting better. It's not a definite science, that's for sure!

Despite these events, Bobby is having a good time and he feels like he's learning a lot. He stayed at the hospital until about 8 pm to help one of the residents with a patient in the ER. I'm very proud of how far he's come in school and how well he's dong! The day that we can call him "Dr. D" isn't that far away!