A med student rekindled

Truth be told, I have not been a fan of medical school to date. I haven't enjoyed the hours of lecture on scientific minutiae, the exams focused on the obscure corners of said scientific minutiae covered in lecture, the people who spent endless hours memorizing the aforementioned corners of scientific minutiae without having anything else in life to talk about, and generally the solitary nature of the pre-clinical years of medical school. When it comes down to it, I have been downright frustrated about not learning any actual MEDICINE in MEDICAL SCHOOL!!!

But I digress. The past few weeks in the ED have somewhat rekindled my willingness to slog through another 12 months of studying before being thrown to the wolves on the wards third year. I think it was actually being immersed in the thick of the ED chaos that did it for me...seeing sick patients, seeing what the doctors do and how the department runs, seeing medicine in one of it's few remaining purer forms medicine where someone is sick (kind of, most of the time) and we supply the healing (or call in a consult from someone who knows what to do).

Honestly, I have never felt as at home in a hospital as in an emergency department. There are no pissing matches between the EM physicians, there are no patients that have been hopelessly "circling the drain" for months on end in one of the beds sucking the resources from other patients, just people who feel that they need emergency care for anything from poison ivy to shortness of breath in a guy with spontaneous pneumothorax diagnosed 30+ years ago to the lady that collapsed with a sudden "worst headache of her life to the guy with a complex medical history of liver failure, diabetes, CHF, COPD, and a case of "the Clap" flaring up since he bought that hooker in Vegas. It is the ultimate renaissance profession, where you get to know a little about a lot of illnesses, do procedures and coordinate with every service in the hospital to get people the help they need...and I think I'm in love with it.


Furthermore, outside of the confines of the stuffy auditorium, it is nice to see my limited knowledge coming into practice...well the random tidbits that I was pimped on by every service the saw me looking over their shoulder anyway. It was nice to expand the pile of notes into the practical realm FINALLY!!! It almost makes that $60k tuition worth it...:)