Eternal Medicine
Sunday, February 20th, 2011 by Shaun PatelI started a rotation at the end of October, 2010. I finally finished it at the beginning of February, 2011. What rotation took this long? Internal Medicine (also known as Eternal Medicine, for this very reason). We spend 12 weeks (four weeks on three different services) during our Medicine rotation at Michigan. My rotation happened to encompass both Thanksgiving and Winter Break, which made it even longer by about four weeks. It was one of the busier rotations of the year, but, as a result, I definitely learned the most on this rotation. We have several additional exams throughout this rotation, including an EKG test, a chest x-ray test, and a pattern recognition test. While these can be pesky while you are also working full days in the hospital, they are very useful retrospectively since they force you to learn many of the fundamental tools of a well-rounded physician.
I am now two weeks into my six week Psychiatry rotation. At Michigan, we spend two weeks on the consult/liaison (C/L) service, two weeks on the inpatient service, and two weeks in outpatient clinics. I started off on the C/L service, which involved going to see patients on other non-Psychiatry services in the hospital if they had any psych-related issues for which their primary team wanted recommendations. While I am most likely not going into Psychiatry, my experience on this service will undoubtedly be useful in the future when taking care of my own patients, many of whom will have psych-related issues. In particular, as I will likely be going into a surgical specialty, I now feel more comfortable dealing with post-operative delirium, a common ailment on many surgical services.
In other news, I did get a chance to briefly escape the Michigan winter and head down to Dallas, TX for another NRMP Board Meeting. We stayed at the Mansion on Turtle Creek (http://www.mansiononturtlecreek.com/) which I would recommend if you are ever in the area. Pictures below:
