Thursday, August 6, 2009

Day 2 and 3

Morning rounds (where they see all the patients with the chief resident) begin at 5:45 a.m. Prior to rounds all of the other residents and medical students have to do their own "rounding" to see the patients so that when they go on rounds they can give the chief resident a quick update on the patient's status. At this first program Drew has about 9 patients. This is significantly more than he is used to having with his medical school (3 or 4). More patients also means that he has to start earlier in order to see all of his patients before rounds at 5:45. I'm not sure what time this means he has to get up, but he tried to get to the hospital by 4:30 a.m. so that he'd have at least an hour to go see all nine of his patients. (I think) during rounds each resident/student presents his patients (their updates, status, etc.) to the chief resident. Drew said that the hospital's format for presenting their cases is different than he is used to and therefore he needs to work on it.
After morning rounds on Tuesday, Drew got to watch (but didn't get to scrub in on because there wasn't enough room) a "very cool surgery." I didn't get any more information than that because our phone calls are extremely brief and I am lucky I even got that much detail out of him. All I know is that the surgery lasted - eight hours. Yes, eight hours. It must have been a very complex surgery, but I seriously cannot imagine standing still, not eating, not drinking, and not going to the bathroom for eight hours!
Surprisingly enough Drew said that the residents and attendings don't ask him very many questions. We were both expecting that he would get quizzed a lot, but so far, not so much. I don't know much more about Tuesday and Wednesday (day 2 and 3) other than the fact that he was on call for Tuesday night. He said he got about 2 and a half hours of sleep. He was done on Wednesday at about 7:00 p.m. and was home and in bed by a little after 8 p.m.
When I asked him about the food, he said that he hadn't even eaten food from the cafeteria yet. The only thing he bought was a water. He has been too busy to eat much. I guess it is good I sent him with all those snacks, because he should be able to fit them in his pockets and eat them when he has a free minute. I'm glad to hear that he is keeping busy, because a very important part of sub-Internships is making sure that he can keep up with the pace. If he is lazy, sits or simply doesn't keep up with the residents it isn't looked upon very well.
So far, so good. It's only a few days in, but he seems to be enjoying himself.
Day 2 and 3 = 38.5 hours

2 comments:

davita said...

My husband lost 15 lbs during one of his away rotations. He was basically q3/q2 during that month, working 14-15 hour days when not on call. He never had time to eat. He was in the OR all the time. He still barely has time to eat. That's just surgery for you.

Elizabeth said...

I cannot belive how many hours he worked in only 2 day!