One more day of orientation

Yesterday was my orientation to internal medicine. My first month will be in outpatient, which has a bit more jumbled schedule than inpatient, but requires less time during the week. It is going to take a while to figure out what is required, and what things are due when, etc. For the most part, my time will be divided among three clinics, and several half-days of lecture. The clinic at which I’ll be spending most of my time is around a half hour away from school which is not going to be fun the days I have lecture in the afternoon at school and clinic in the morning (or vice versa). I will also spend a couple days at a nephrologist’s office, and a couple days at an asthma clinic. The asthma clinic should be interesting, especially since students are responsible for almost all patient care, including educating the patients as to how to use the various types of inhalers and spacers, most of which I had never even seen before yesterday. Two of those days will be at a spanish-speaking clinic.

Last night I went to a barbecue with my Bible study group from school. To illustrate the variation of third year experiences, here is a list of our orientation day experiences:

Me: 4 hours of lecture-style orientation, two hour-long pre-test, start clinic on Wednesday
Guy #1: Couple hours of orientation, start clinic next Monday(!?)
Guy #2: Couple hours of orientation, scrub into surgical case, stay at hospital until 6:15 pm, be back Wednesday (other guy on his team there today, one stayed all last night)
Guy #3: Similar to above, but stayed at hospital until 7:00 pm
Girl #1: Could not come to the barbecue as she was on call at the hospital for trauma surgery all last night
Girl #2: Same as me, minus two hours of orientation
Girl #3: Same as guys #’s 2 and 3, but stayed until 8:00 pm (orientation started at 7:00 am, she had to page her resident as soon as it was over), back today

Since I am on outpatient this month, I will have weekends and evenings off, but next month in the VA, the course director made it clear that we get one day off a week, and it must be a Saturday or Sunday. If we end up with the whole weekend off, we work it the next week. Should be a very interesting experience.