Well, I only have 4.5 weeks left of 3rd year medical school. And it's totally blowing my mind.
Medicine is the rollercoaster of 3rd year squared. You have days where you panic because you are convinced that when you become an intern--something that is terrifyingly close to happening--you are certain to kill patient after patient. Then you have days where you just seem to know what is going on, where the attending likes every patient plan you have, where they basically just sign your orders as they are and you think hey, you might be able to do this after all.
So, on the one hand I am SO excited to be almost done with 3rd year. I have a written exam on Friday about EKGs, x-rays and--*shudder*--statistics. Then, in a little less than 5 weeks, the medicine shelf test. My very... last... shelf test. Holy moley.
Medicine is a lot more fun than I thought... and it is also a lot harder. Which is saying something, because I expected it to be hard. I guess I expected it to be hard like an 80's move montage where the main character does lots of hard work set to peppy music over the course of about 30 seconds. Whereas instead it mostly involves rounding for 5 hours a day, doing a bunch of scut for another 5 hours, rounding some more, and coming home to read and study for another 2 hours or so. Maybe if we had a guy follow us around with a boombox on rounds, playing some peppy 80's music, that would be better.
Hm... maybe I'll bring that up at the next team meeting. I'm thinking "Working for the Weekend", or maybe "Danger Zone". Ohh...what's that song from the Karate Kid? You know, "You're the BEST! Around! Nothin's ever gonna keep you down!"
Yes. That should make rounds go faster.
The experiences of a recently minted MD/PhD out to take over the world.
Posts Which Might Have Meant Something (A "Best Of" About the MD/PhD Experience)
- Grad vs Med: The Smackdown
- Surviving Graduate School (And Possibly Even Getting a Degree), Part 1
- Surviving Graduate School, Part 2: Be the Captain of Your Own Ship
- Surviving Graduate School, Part 3: Constant Dripping Hollows Out a Stone
- The four most important decisions of graduate school
- The MD/PhD Journey: Welcome to the bottom of a new ladder!
- You say Mudphud, I say Sucker
- MD/PhDs are people, too
- Like Being in the Ring with Mike Tyson
- Student, evaluate thyself
- ChumpWork
- Big Deal, I'm Very Professional
- Grad vs Med: The Smackdown--UPDATE
- Random Observations from the Clinics
- Whatcha, whatcha, whatcha want?
- It's graduate school that sucks; not research
Terms Possibly Unfamiliar to Non-Med Types
- Mudphud: An MD/PhD
- Fellow: A jolly gentleman. Kidding--someone who could be an attending but instead choses to continue training despite being paid and treated like livestock
- PGY: Post-graduate year, ie PGY1 would be a first-year resident, PGY2 would be a second year, etc
- Hammer page: Someone pages you every few minutes for hours; dreaded by all
- AI: Acting internship, done in 4th year medical school, to try and prepare you for your internship
- MS3: A third year medical student
- Rounds: Where the docs and med students get together and check up on all of their patients, usually REALLY early in the morning
- Intern: A first-year resident
- Attending: The senior physician in charge of the service and your future; aka the big boss, the head cheese.
- Clerkship: A rotation through a clinical specialty, such as medicine, pediatrics, etc.
- Shelf test: The big, scary national exam given at the end of each clinical clerkship
- Pimping: When the attending quizzes you on medical stuff in front of the whole team. Var: getting pimped, pimp question
Other MD/PhD, Grad or Med School Web Pages and Blogs
About Me
- Dr.VonB
- An MD/PhD beginning her residency, with an MD/PhD husband beginning his residency, with a weensy MD/PhD offspring beginning her life and two large dogs in tow.
I didn't spend six years in evil medical school to be called "mister", thank you very much.
Current Obsessions
My Favorite Sites
3 comments:
Guess what-you're not alone!
I have 2 weeks of Hematology & Oncology module plus 1 module next year because I'm going to Australia for research. Plus, OSCE next week!
And I'm not sure next year I'll be ready for internship yet.
I keep trying to convince myself that this is the year where I have to learn to come up with my assessments (can do that -- yay!), and next year I'll start coming up with plans that won't kill people. Right. I'll get right on that.
You know there's that song, I think it's from Team America (that ridiculous South Park-y puppet movie), that's lke, "If you want to get really good at something, you're gonna need a montage". That comes to mind.
Hang in there. Glad you're at least enjoying the medicine. Oh, and PS - it's very hard to actually kill someone as an intern. That's why you have an upper level.
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