Spoiled

Two weeks into my Medicine Clerkship: I'm feeling like I get the system more. My confidence yo-yos quite a bit. I've got good days where I'm on top of most everything, and then there are those other days where I feel like I should be sitting in the corner wearing a dunce cap.

My team is awesome:

• Reva: fellow medical student. Reva has been great, helping me transition into this rotation. Always helpful with stuff I've forgotten since the pre-clinical years. We make a pretty good team.
• John: an intern from Ireland, and Reva's supervisor. Always teaching, and even takes an hour or so from his schedule every week to teach us an aspect of the physical exam. Doctors trained outside of the United States tend to get better training regarding the physical exam than their American counterparts, so I definitely take the opportunity to learn from them whenever possible.
• Rahul: my intern, also very helpful in helping me along.
  
• Stacy: The team resident (PGY-3). Great person, keeps the team laid-back.
• Sally: The team's attending physician. Sally is AWESOME. She's always smiling, always keeps in mind to make teaching points when appropriate, fantastic bedside manner. During attending rounds, when she gives a lecture to the team, she brings in chocolate.

The Medicine Department is always feeding us. We're pretty much responsible only for dinner if we're in the hospital late. Weekends we're on our own, but still - this is more than most other places would do. In short, it probably goes downhill from here.

I love my patients. I'm at a Veterans Administration Hospital, so all of my patients have been in the military. Vietnam Vets are hitting their mid- to late-50s about now; World War II vets are in their 80s and 90s. I'm not sure what I expected - you know that they're people just like everyone else, but there's that tendency to put them on that pedestal because of the sacrifices they've made. Of course, when I meet them, they're (usually) the sweetest people - really nice, and modest to a fault when asked about their military service. They're just really grateful if we do our best to make them feel better. Actually, they do pretty well even if you just talk to them. This is something we noticed quite a bit in our psychiatry patients, that depressed patients would look a little happier when you stopped by and engaged them for a while. In the patient charts, that's noted as: "Brightens with attention." It sounds kind of lame, I suppose, but it's so much better than "Kicks the medical student out of the room." Which hasn't happened to me.

Yet.