An Intro: a bit on what to expect

For those who don't know, third year of medical school is the part of schooling where we essentially 'apprentice' a physician in the hospital. So after a lifetime of classroom work (and passing the mother of all tests), they sorta drop us off at the hospital with a "good luck." It is both thrilling and terrifying.

For each month (about) we 'round' with a certain doctor (called a preceptor) on a different speciality. So for example, my first month is psychiatry. After that month, I take another couple tests and then I move on to my next speciality, internal medicine.  Not everyone has the same schedule but everyone has to go through the same basic specialities. Those are: internal med (IM) x2, family med (FM) x2, surgery x2, psychiatry, OB/GYN, and pediatrics.  You'll notice some of these I have to do twice. The school claims it gives us more patient contact and the opportunity to see more basic cases.

Since we are only doing classwork 1 day a week (thursdays) and only for a couple of hours, third year is all about social skills. It is about balancing your learning and observing with your volunteering and enthusiasm to jump in. The biggest change beyond the move into the hospital is the fact that our grades are now determined subjectively by a single doctor (preceptor). It is everyone's secret fear that they might get a preceptor who doesn't like them based off some personality quirk and receive a bad grade or worse they do something stupid the first day and can't seem to recover from it in the doctor's mind.  This type of situation is the primary content of the horror stories in third year.

It has got me on edge of what to expect and also instilled a bit of terror since I don't know what is expected of me. To top it off, each preceptor expects different things of their students and these expectations are hardly ever mentioned. The constant awareness of your social responsibilities is often blamed for changing you as a person and as a physician, sometimes for the better and sometimes for worse.

So I remember what happened and how, I wanted to chronicle my experience to see what changes and how. My goal is post something on everyday I work (we'll see if that happens).  I have divided it up into three parts: Doctor's Notes, Patients of Interest, and Notes to Self.

I must confess when I was pre-med, I did something similar when I worked in the ER for a summer. You can read that blog: here.

Otherwise, my first rotation is Psych (as mentioned above) and all I was told was to report to the jail and "look as ugly as possible."  Should be interesting times. Starts Aug 2nd.