Rotation 4 and 5: Inpatient Oncology and Gen Med in Pediatrics

Posted by Polly at Thursday, November 21, 2019

My rotation 4 was my inpatient oncology rotation specifically in solid tumors. The patients I saw were admitted due to oncologic emergencies and other cancer related problems. A few patients were there to receive chemotherapy that resulted in them staying for several days at the hospital to be closely monitored. Rotation 4 was my hardest rotation by far. I was coming off of two nontraditional rotations and it was hard to get back into the groove of things. I forgot a lot of my clinical knowledge because I haven't had the chance to use it. Overall, it was...an experience.

Rotation 5 was in general medicine, specifically in pediatrics at Mott. This was by far my favorite rotation. It had me seriously consider going into a pediatric residency and abandoning my fellowship route I had been pursuing since my P2 year. I was coming off of an adult inpatient rotation and I can't say I enjoyed it due to a number of reasons. I entered my rotation 5 having very low expectations. To my surprise, I actually liked working up my kiddos. In school, we focus a majority of our time on the adult population. The pediatric population was new and I liked learning about all the new disease states that were not talked about in school. From upper respiratory infections to meningitis to eating disorders, there was a good variety of things I could work up in my patients. There were many interesting cases and one particular one that comes to mind was seeing Kawasaki disease in person. I remember receiving a one sentence summary of what it was in class and that was it. It was an interesting case and was a great topic discussion! I also owed my enjoyment of this rotation to my preceptor. She was a great teacher and I could always depend on her to answer my questions, no matter how silly. It goes to show what a difference it makes having a good preceptor, versus having one that you cannot connect with.