Half-way through

I am now half-way done with third year! In less than a year and a half I will be a doctor. My last day of inpatient peds was yesterday and the shelf exam was today. It didn’t seem horrible, definitely not as bad as the medicine shelf, but it is one of those exams from which you leave having no clue whatsoever as to how you did.

This last week there has really been nothing worth posting. Lots of sick babies—I can at least now say that I feel very comfortable coming up with a plan for infants with bronchiolitis. My intern the ER resident did extremely well this month—our senior resident was very impressed with how quickly she caught on.

Now I get ten beautiful days off. The day after I come back we have a class “intersession” that will consist of eight hours of lectures and small groups about professionalism and “patient centered care”. Yippee. Woohoo. Save me a seat in the front row. They actually emailed us five articles on these topics that they expect us to read over Christmas. Yeah, that’s going to happen. I don’t fully understand why we have so much touchy-feely stuff in medical school—the vast majority of people I know in medical school tend (like I do—can you tell?) toward the cynical side—maybe it’s the more sensitive ones who go into the education side of medicine?

My next rotation will be OB/GYN—I’ll be at a community hospital that is known as the “baby factory”. It will be the first rotation I’ll have been on with overnight call. I’ve not particularly been looking forward to this rotation, but I suppose it will be good. It will definitely come in handy for the next time I get stuck on an elevator with a woman in active labor.