The hospital life certainly is busier than clinic life and I was having some trouble balancing my time studying after work and doing the other parts of life I need to do (still need to find time to work out, it's catching up with me ).
The past couple weeks I've spent with the gastroenterology team and the inpatient pediatrics team. With the GI team we spent the mornings doing upper GI scopes and lower colonoscopies for kids with concerns of foreign bodies stuck in the esophagus, peptic ulcer disease, ulcerative colitis, crohn's disease, and cellulitis. We also replaced some G tubes (tubes that go from the outside of your body into your stomach to ensure the child is getting their nutrition if they can't take it by mouth). In the afternoons we would see patients in the GI clinic to check up on how the management of their chronic diseases were going, adjust medications, see new patients for problems with vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, excess weight, too little of weight, bloody stools, mucus stools, reflux, liver problems, you name it! It was a really cool week to see a variety of illnesses and be able to see the damage (or success of treatment) done through the scopes.
This week and last week I'm assigned inpatient pediatrics which is the last part of my pediatric rotation and this consists of managing the overall care of kids who are staying in the hospital. We've seen a lot of things from severe bacterial infections, brain injuries, chemotherapy patients (loved getting to know these kids!), dehydration, diabetic ketoacidosis (very high blood sugars and very dangerous), kidney problems, bowel transplant recoveries, behavior issues complicating another illness, conjunctivitis, toxic shock syndrome, etc. I visit the patients in the morning and see how they are doing and do a physical, type up a progress note, and present the information to the group of physicians, pharmacists, nursing staff, and residents and then we talk about the plan and changes to the plans. After lunch we check in with our patients, follow up with anything they need, and take new admissions. I've learned a lot on this section of the rotation and have had some really great attending take time to sit with me to teach and offer great feedback. The residents and fellows I've worked with have all been really great and I'm grateful they were kind enough to put up with all of the many questions I had.
Plan for the week is to prepare for my SHELF exam (cumulative pediatrics exam) which I take Thursday and then do some planning for my OSCE (patient actors come and we pretend to be their doctor and treat them) which is Friday.
I start my surgery rotation Monday (Transplant and Cardiothoracic).