For the past month I've been the Bostonian in Boston. My natural habitat!!! I've been hanging out in some of the Hub's better emergency departments and I'll be spending August in another cool Boston-area program. I can't tell you how nice it has been work in the field that I want to match into in the city I want to live in. I finally feel like the past 3 years of pain and suffering are coming to an end and that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I feel like I can finally be what I want to be and do what I want to do. Best of all, I leave my shifts exhausted and happy, which hasn't happened very often in medical school.
One thing that is nice about doing an emergency medicine clerkship is that you have freedom to see the patient, evaluate them and put your own plan into action with the approval of the attending. Something that I hadn't really appreciated until these rotations are how awesome ED nurses are. At the first program that I worked at, the nurses and physicians had an amazing collaborative relationship...no one was above anyone else and everyone worked hard to "move the meat".
One of the murses (yes...murse) adopted me during one of my first shifts and made sure that I knew where everything was. He'd save procedures for me, grease the wheels to make me look good, (knew what tests were going to be sent before I asked for them and usually what meds should be hanging)...and would gently remind me if I forgot something in the orders. Absolutely stellar (!), as were most of the other nurses. It was probably one of my favorite settings to work in...ever!
In the new department that I've started in, there's a physical divide between the physicians and everyone else. The department, designed by a trauma surgeon, is divided into two pods. Each pod has a large rectangular nurses station in the center surrounding an enclosed physician's charting area, a med room and a nutrition center. This doesn't lend itself to the most collaborative environment, and as such it's not easy to keep track of who has who. Fortunately, I'm pretty low-key and have managed to get along with most of the nurses pretty well without them rolling their eyes or yelling at me...so that makes me feel good.
Anyway, I've had alot of shifts and a good amount of reading to keep up on amongst living at home with the parents and siblings wanting to hang out in my free time...so the blogging will be thin this month, but I'm sure that I'll have some more stories to share...
2 comments:
Shout out to my ER nurse brotha's and sista's! Woot!
:)
I am glad you have a good murse around.
I want to strangle the two I work with using 02 tubing most days. Hee hee.
I made the mistake of dating a murse in my old ER. It's like they always say; don't get your meat where you get your bread.
Hey dude, I'm really glad to hear it is going well for you. It is amazing how much difference location can make. A very wise senior resident once told me as a 3rd year med student, "all residencies suck, ad no matter what they tell you at the interview days, they are all basically the same. Just pick the location that will make you the happiest." With some exceptions, I think it holds pretty true.
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