Medicine at Michigan Student Blogs

I am about to begin the 7^th of 8 weeks of orthopaedic surgery to begin my M4 year. The breadth and variety within orthopaedics are some of the most appealing factors that draw me to the field. So far, I have spent time on the trauma, sports, and pediatrics services, all of which have had very different patient populations and medical pathologies. Nevertheless, they have all been very interesting and it is great to finally be rotating on services that I have chosen and can see myself pursuing in the future.

I "volunteered" both my arms at a practice casting session for us M4s.

While shadowing was useful in college and earlier in medical school, I’ve noticed that it is no longer very interesting to me as it’s not very proactive or hands-on. Whether it is the nature of the orthopaedic services or the fact that I am now a senior medical student, I have enjoyed having the opportunity to participate to a greater degree in patient care, both in the operating room and on the floor. Nevertheless, as with any field, with more responsibility comes more… paperwork… progress notes, operation notes, discharge summaries, follow-up requests, etc. These are equally important as direct patient care but not quite as glamorous…

Additionally, the amount and quality of teaching on the orthopaedic services has been wonderful. Even on busy surgical services, the residents, fellows, and attendings still take the time to teach students, which I similarly hope to do in the future.

Dr. Ward, orthopaedic intern extraordinaire, who will now believe that I was only half joking when I said I would be posting his picture up.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 19th, 2011 at 4:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.