NeUrOLOgY

Posted by Melanie at Sunday, March 25, 2012

I just finished up my neurology rotation with Dr. Dina Kennedy at UMHHC.

It was a combination of general neurology and neurology intensive care, so it was quite an interesting month.

Dr. Kennedy covers all the neurology and neurosurgical patients. For the rotation, I was assigned one of the three neurology teams.

My team had the attending, the senior resident, an intern resident, and four medical students.

Let me take you through a typical day:

• 6:00 am - arrive at UMHHC and workup patients on my team, including new admits
• 7:15 am - meet with Dr. Kennedy to discuss any recommendations that need to be addressed during rounds; this could include renal dose adjustments, medication reconciliation, adding bowel regimens, and addressing drug levels
• 8:00 am - Neurology ICU rounds - all the attendings and residents and medical students meet in a conference room and discuss the patients on the neurology teams that are in the ICU
• 9:00 am - Teams breakup and round on their patients; this is where I would make my recommendations
• 10:30 am - Rounds end; touch base with Dr. Kennedy and let her know if any pressing issues came up; work up patients completely and enter interventions in TheraDoc
• 1:00 pm - Meet with Dr. Kennedy to go over patients; formal patient case presentations
• 2:00 pm - Topic discussion/presentation
• 4:00 pm - Followup with team on any outstanding issues

During the first two weeks of the rotation, ICU topic discussions took place from 2 - 4. All of the ICU APPE students were involved with this (trauma/burn, SICU). These included PPI prophy in the ICU, tight glycemic control, and septic shock, to name a few.

Other topic discussions were neurology based, including meningitis, seizures, and stroke.

I was with another P4 student and we each had to present a journal club and a topic presentation.

This rotation was great for somebody who wants to get a little taste of an ICU rotation, since most of my patients were on the general neurology floor and only a couple were in the ICU. I highly recommend it!!