Island Med Student

I can’t believe it’s been almost a week since I posted something! This is very unlike me. Anyway, I’ll try not to do that again. I don’t really have any good excuses as to why I didn’t post stuff, so I won’t try to make up any.

This coming week is my very last week of internal medicine. Now that I have finished the only two rotations that are a whopping 12 weeks long, it’s all smooth sailing from here on out. Actually, not really, but it’s nice to think of it that way.

Next Monday I start Neurology, which I’m actually pretty excited about, because that’s always been a field of interest to me.

So, what did I think of the internal medicine rotation? Well, it kind of sucked. While I did learn stuff here and there, I don’t feel like I learned nearly as much as I could have. I do feel a little more comfortable with some of the concepts, but I still feel pretty fuzzy on most of them. One thing that I didn’t like as much, especially as compared to surgery and psych, is that we didn’t have as much patient contact. In fact, I’d go days without really even seeing a patient. This pretty much sucks. And while I could always take the initiative and just go examine patients, it seems kind of silly to do this, and I hate bothering the patients for no other reason than my boredom.

While I don’t think that I am anywhere near being able to actually function as a doctor, I definitely feel like I’ve come a long way since my basic sciences. I don’t feel like a complete idiot examining patients, and I can come up with a reasonably good list of differential diagnoses for many different types of complaints. So, all in all, I know I’m learning stuff.

One thing that I keep realizing over and over again is that I need to be around patients. The longer I go without seeing patients, the more apathetic I become, and the more I feel like med school sucks, and that being a doctor sucks. But then when I see a patient, all the goodness comes flooding back. I definitely could never work in a lab, or in an office on a computer, or any of the other sorts of jobs that require little or no patient contact. I need to talk to people, and touch people, and make people laugh.

I’m off to take my doggy doos on a long walk now. Happy Sunday!