MD Class of 2012 Blog


Saturday, October 23, 2010

3rd year

3rd year is what I’ve been waiting for. Going to the classroom, studying in the library, not interacting with patients (ie the focus of the first 2 years of med school) was not what I signed up for, but it was and will always be a necessary evil. The light at the end of the tunnel is 3rd year. You get the opportunity to try out all the major specialties, you don’t have the burden of responsibility because you can’t write orders or prescribe medications, and residents are always double-checking your work, and you don’t quite have to worry about getting into a residency program yet. It’s great.

Being a 3rd year medical student like being an awkward teenager starting high school: You don’t quite know how to fit in, you’re trying to become more independent without overstepping your bounds, and you get lost easily in a new environment. Remember what it was like to be a teenager? At times you do very “grown up things”—learn to drive a car, vote for the first time, take care of making dinners some nights, for example. Yet while you’re testing out your boundaries, you still get reprimanded, you still live in your parents’ home, and you likely are not making enough money to support yourself, so you still have to play by your parents rules.

Life on the wards is very similar. As a medical student, we just learned all this medicine during our first two years so we feel like we know a lot, but at the same time, compared to the nurses/interns/residents/attendings, we know so little. We walk into rooms at 5 in the morning to talk to patients, take their histories, do physical exams, answer questions we know the answers to, write notes in the chart. A few minutes later, the nurse/intern/resident/attending do the exact same thing. These activities are very “grown-up” yet there’s that constant feeling of not knowing if you’re doing the right thing, or that you’re playing pretend since everything you do is done again, and usually better. It’s easy to get reprimanded, easy to get lost or feel lost, and we still have to play by the rules.

It’s pretend, but at the same time, medicine is a field where you’re always making an impact on someone’s life whether you want to or not. We have the remarkable privilege to ask patients intimate questions, perform physical examinations, and to our astonishment at times, patients let us. As “in-between doctors” we have the unique ability and time to translate what is happening to patients throughout their hospital course, and why things are happening the way they’re happening. Though it may seem from our vantage point that the white coat, stethoscope and scrubs feel awkward and like we’re playing pretend, many patients do not feel that way. To them, we’re just another health care provider waking them from sleep to ask them if they have chest pain, shortness of breath or if they’ve farted yet. The best part about it, is that your real responsibility is to try on the shoes of each specialty and learn without danger to the patient. It’s awkward, but it’s the best thing ever.

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