Started my new rotation at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. I am on the Trauma and Emergency Surgery Service. I knew it would be a big change from the last rotation. I knew I'd feel overwhelmed at first, that it would take me a while to adjust. I was expecting that I'd finally be on a rotation where there would be other American students and I'd finally be able to have a standard to measure myself against. I expected it all, and it's all true.
It's definitely a big change. Trauma and emergency surgery makes Pediatric Cardiac surgery look like a British tea party, all nice prim and proper.
I was definitely overwhelmed. I wasn't issued an ID until 1 1/2 days into the rotation, so couldn't go anywhere in the hospital by myself. And wasn't granted computer access until 2 1/2 days into the rotation. So for about 3 days I was nothing but dead weight on the team. I hated it. I knew that it wasn't my fault, but I hated that I couldn't pull my own weight.
It is very humbling to go through this process of adjusting to a new rotation alongside students that have been doing this for months already and can dive in from the get-go.
I am so incredibly thankful that everyone on the team is incredibly nice. They don't judge me for asking those mundane questions. Things like "what does_____ mean?" Seriously, sometimes I read a line of a patients note and am completely lost as to what it means. ( Ex: A&O x 3) (And I thought Spanish was a foreign language.) Apparently those are simple frases that every student learns way back in their 3rd year, and here I am almost done with med school, and..... Well, no matter, that's why I'm here, to learn medicine in the US. Of course when someone tells me what all of these frases mean I know them, I just don't recognize them in their abbreviated form.
First week is past. I survived.
Hasta!
No comments:
Post a Comment