Residents

Yesterday, I met some of residents in a couple senses of the word. We visited the nursing home facility affiliated with the hospital and spent some time with the family practice residents doing their thing at the clinic. I'm a little intimidated by their knowledge and experience. I know we're still learning, but technically they are doctors already. It shows in their polished presentations. I'm still mostly trying to figure stuff out and get out of surgery mode. I have to remember that I am not expected to be them. Even though we have some similar training, the name tags we wear read differently. Mine says Physician Assistant. Not MD, not DO. PA-S for now. We're all still trying to figure out what that means.

I had my first overnight call experience staffing the hospital last night. I managed to sleep. It's not like people were calling me for my brilliant medical insight, but it was a good learning experience. It's definitely a bit strange sleeping over in the hospital - not going home at all for 36 hours. It's nice that home isn't far away. I don't know how residents/interns/med students did it when they had no restrictions on the amount of time they had to work. My brain/body just doesn't function well on minimal sleep and little nutrition.

It's definitely a different set up in a smaller community. I wasn't expecting family practice to be so demanding - I mean compared to surgery it should be easy, right? Oh my naivety. It's challenging to remember everything about patients with chronic diseases and know all about prenatal care, newborns, growing kids, preventative screening guidelines for adults, medication interactions/side effects/doses, diagnostic tests. Granted, what I'm doing now probably encompasses more responsibilities in that we see everything thing from in the womb to end of life care and by taking call for the hospitalists we manage emergency admissions and post-surgical patients too.