Sucked

So I had a stint on a urology team at the most "intense" hospital on our campus. The way this month works is, I do urology for 10-12 days, then anesthesia for 12, then urology again for 12 days. Thankfully, my 2nd urology stint is at a different hospital. The children's one, even.

But seriously, that team was horrible. The hours were crap as you'd expect: show up at 5:15am to help the intern with pre-rounding scut work, then round at 6:00am until time to hit the OR, watch a bunch of operations all day, then eventually more scut work and afternoon rounds. After fighting evening traffic, I'd get home at maybe 5:30 or 6:00pm and "enjoy" my few hours before I had to think about getting some sleep before another 4:30am awakening.

Ok, fine. Expected hours for this block. I have 3+ more months of hours like this. It's the team specifically that I didn't like. Your typical surgery types: white, sporty, butch-haired males all the way from attending to intern. Even though urology is generally considered the happy-go-lucky lifestyle specialty, it's different in academics and at a huge, tertiary care hospital. It's still surgery residency, and you have residents working 80+ hour weeks and what-not.

I was pretty much blatantly ignored and treated like an uninvited pet dog. Part of it was because they are a busy, busy service. The inpatient roster was around 23-28 with 2-5 consults the whole time, and they had to round and operate and round and call consults and write orders like mad. So I get it. But I felt completely disrespected by some of them, like they didn't even bother to pull me aside 1 minute and say "hey, sorry we're so busy, but you could do this or this". No, it was just irritated glances and "do this" "do that".

I haven't been to this particular hospital at all since I started 3rd year 8+ months ago. I noticed off the bat that it was a more intense, serious place, with frankly ruder staff. It didn't help that I was on one of the busier surgical teams (probably second next to transplant). In the OR, I didn't enjoy the procedures. I would scrub in and stand there for 5 1/2 hours while they did their lymph node dissections and ileal loop thing. I get it, you're all busy, there's no time to deal with the med student. But I've had a great third year up until now, you could at least show some effort.

Anyway, whatever. I start anesthesia tomorrow at a much better place. After that, more urology at the children's hospital, then off to somewhere (I don't know yet) for 5.3 weeks of general surgery. I'll get used to the horrible hours, I only ask that where I'm placed has a bearable atmosphere.

Yukers signin off~

Surgery Clerkship

If any of you clicked on my blog, wondering what's up, then here. I'm in 3rd year of medical school. During that year, you have to "rotate" through all the different major medical specialties...at about a rate of a different one per month. Such as my schedule would have it, all of my surgery specialties have come last in the year. And so, between now and late-May, I'll be dealing with the "worst" of third year, if not the worst of medical school.

So I'm now on surgery. My hours are very, very long, and my days start very, very early. I don't have the luxury of weekends anymore; they will be chopped in half at best. But in general, days are expected to be 12 hours long. In my case right now, this is my expected routine:

4:30am - Wake up
5:15am - Bet at hospital to help intern do scut work (dirty work, paper work)
4:30pm - Supposedly when I get out
6:00pm - Later end of when I get out

Mind you, I don't have a "safe haven" of Saturday and Sunday. I should get one of those two days off a week. This coming weekend I have a feeling I will work straight through, because my team doesn't give a shit that I'm there and they just want me there to do work while they have me.

I will be online as I can be. I'm not sure just yet how waking up at 4:30am will affect my body, but it will surely wreak some amount of havok. I can only imagine that to arrive home 13-14 hours later, I'll be dead-tired, even though it'll only be 6 or 7 in the evening. How I'll deal with sleep and how I distribute sleep is to be seen. But I put friends absolutely first, so I won't be falling out of touch w/anyone; that is my priority.

I can only say that going through this is just as much physical as mental and emotional strain. I will do my best to cope.