Thursday, November 02, 2006

Peds

CT surgery is now over—I have bittersweet feelings about that. Monday I saw a minimally invasive repair of an atrial septal defect. It was quite amazing, the surgeon did the entire surgery through a 2-2.5 inch incision in the inframammary fold. Much superior to having a footlong scar down one’s chest, especially when the patient is a 21 year old woman.

Tuesday was the surgical exam, which was nowhere near as hard as the medicine exam, but I think I could have done better had I had more time to study. Wednesday was pediatrics orientation which was the typical orientation spiel. The girl who was on CT surgery with me has the exact opposite taste as me—she hated surgery, and almost started crying with joy at peds orientation when she heard about the clinics we would be going to, I really liked surgery and don’t care for clinics.

Today I went and basically just shadowed two nurse practitioners at an endocrine clinic. The first patient was an 11 year old girl who was very overweight and has high cholesterol. She’ll be getting a number of tests to check for various metabolic disorders and will continue to see her nutritionist. The second patient was 17 year old girl with a hormonal disorder due to unknown causes. The last patient was a one year old girl who is getting growth hormone. The patients were interesting, but altogether it was rather boring. I do not think I am cut out to see patients in the office all day long.

This afternoon I went to the nursery and had to do an H&P on a newborn. I had to get the details for the history entirely from the chart, so I had to spend what seemed like hours going over it, and tonight I have to write it all out and be ready to present it tomorrow.

I can’t say that I’m not going to appreciate the weekends off this month (and four—day—weekend on Thanksgiving!!!), but I think I can safely say pediatrics is not for me. In all fairness I think I would probably enjoy clinic as an attending, having my own patients instead of just observing other people’s. Also, this is the first day of the rotation and I usually hate the first week of any rotation.

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