Leaving no stone unturned

Posted by Akin at Saturday, August 22, 2009

So I’m three weeks into my first rotation as a P4 student and I’m still alive. I’m doing an inpatient clinical rotation in the hematology/oncology department at University of Michigan Health System (UMHS). As I walked into the hospital on day one, I didn’t know what to expect. The only thing I knew for certain was that I would be doing lots of work and getting paid in class credits.

After a day full of introduction, another classmate and I were assigned three patients each. I began to work up my patients later that night at about 7 pm, and didn’t finish until after midnight. And that was just three patients! The next day I found out my classmate had had the same experience. Three weeks later, we have five patients to follow and I can accomplish this in the time it used to take me to do one patient. So I think we are starting to get the hang of it. This past week my preceptor has also started to let us round without her. We’ve also started to build a trusting rapport with the attending physician and physician asistants. They ask for our opinion more, and when they do, we hesitate a lot less.

After three weeks of my first rotation, I can better understand why former students say rotations pass so quickly. I even asked my preceptor yesterday (Friday), “How can I make the most of this last week?” She quickly threw the question back at me, “How can you make the most out of the last week?” I didn’t really have a solid answer, but it’s something I’m going to think about this weekend. I want to make sure to leave no stone unturned before moving on to the next rotation.