Ob/Gyn Residency – Month 1
Sorry I’ve been away so long! Between graduating medical school, moving across the state with 6mo old twins, traveling, welcoming our new Au Pair, Odelia, and starting residency, life has been hectic, to say the least. I can only imagine life will continue to be hectic(-er), but now that I’m back to some what of a predictable routine my goal is to blog more frequently. Not for y’all – I’m sure you didn’t miss me a bit (*tear*) – but for me, as I truly enjoy writing here and I fully intend to keep doing it.
July 1 marked the first day of residency, with a week of orientation preceding, and so far it’s been a nicely terrifying adventure. I started on Ambulatory Gynecology, so I feel like I’ve been eased into everything very slowly. My hours have been fine and I’ve been able to keep up fairly well with things, but again – I’m on basically the easiest rotation of intern year.
The biggest thing I’ve found? I have so much to learn. I often feel like a lost puppy – I do a lot of wandering around in clinic asking upper-levels where consents are kept, how to access lab values in the 25 EMR programs we use, and if we’re really sure I can give that person a refill on their Fluconazole, because holycrapmynameMDisonthatscript. I’m sure the 2nd years see me coming and battle each other for hiding spots in the equipment closet lest I ask them for 6,000th time which forms I should fill out on a pre-op hysterectomy patient. God bless their patient souls (see what I did there? heh).
Labor & Delivery call days have been fun, delivering babies and having my name go on the birth certificate is an exciting step forward from being the (extremely awesome, but typically nameless) professional placenta catcher I was in my third year of medical school. Being in charge of triaging patients has taught me a lot, but I still feel like I know close to nothing. Every upper-level and attending I’ve worked with has been extremely patient and almost all of them are eager to teach. If nothing else, after the past several weeks I am 100% convinced I chose not only the right specialty, but the perfect program for me.
Pagers still annoy me. I can’t figure out why we can write prescriptions on an iPad and it magically shows up at the pharmacy, but I still have to carry around a ridiculous piece of technology (and sometimes two or three of them) from 1970 everywhere I go. You’d think we could just get an app on our phone called “PAGER APP” and divert pages to it. I mean, really, it cannot be that hard to do. Oh well, I finally figured out how to use it and I’m slowly becoming less senile towards the little guy. At least nobody has asked me to fax anything yet.
Sim labs have been great teaching tools. We’ve done some simulated complicated deliveries with Noelle (and her weird, tiny baby) which are nothing like real-life complicated deliveries, but do give you a chance to slowly and calmly think through management techniques without the nervousness. We used beef tongue for an unusually great model of perineal lacerations and hysterotomies and a couple attendings and residents worked with us learning closure techniques. We learned LEEP on some unfortunate HPV-infected summer sausages (that smelled…awesome…yah I’ll go with awesome) and the Pap Smear reps came around and gave us a nice overview of the correct technique for gathering those. All in all, I feel like these have been an awesome chance for us to practice things we are suddenly expected to know how to do.
So, life is busy, but good. I expect in the coming months things will only continue to get crazier and busier, but the work is fun and the people are great. My co-interns are better than I could have asked for and the upper-levels and attendings here are fabulous, as expected.
Interns celebrating Jenna’s birthday!