Cardiology was a busy month! Our list of patients wasn't as overwhelming as it sometimes is, but since I rotated through here in November, I had enough on my plate already.
I would arrive at the hospital at 6:45 to start looking up my patients on the computer. I'd check their labs, recent imaging studies, read notes from other doctors and nurses, adjust their medicines if I needed to, read their EKGs, and review the monitors that they'd been hooked up to overnight. Then I'd go visit them and do an exam and see how they were.
At 9:00 was when we would have formal rounds where we sat in a room with other residents, a fellow, and our attending to discuss each patient and the plans for that person. We would then walk around again and visit the patients as a group. This took until about noon.
At 1:00 p.m. we had lectures about cardiology topics.
Throughout the entire morning (but usually more busy in the afternoons) we would be ready to admit patients who had chest pain or heart attacks from outside hospitals and needed care or who arrived at home from the emergency department. We also were paged if other doctors needed cardiologists for their patients who are in the hospital for other reasons and wanted us to see them.
I usually stayed until 5:30p.m. alternating with the other residents who can take off earlier, because we also share call shifts that are 28 hours (:) or longer) that we all had once or twice a week. On call we would do the same thing admitting new patients with chest pain or checking up on the other patients. We took care of all of the team list overnight. For example, answering the pages from nursing staff and ordering new labs or new studies when we needed them throughout the night.
In cardiology we were able to treat a lot of various types of heart attacks, heart failure, heart failure exacerbations, care for people before and after valve replacements and help manage arrhythmias (a lot of atrial fibrillation). It was busy service but there was a lot to see and learn!