patient care

Chronicles of a Med Student: Beginning Clinical Rotations

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I walked into my first rotation with a stethoscope and granola bar in my pocket and a LOT of nerves. I had no idea what to expect. I knew I had to impress my preceptor (which I imagined was easier said than done) and ace my shelf exam because this was the specialty I wanted to pursue. Talk about a lot of pressure. A fellow medical student and I walked into the hospital on the first day and while we were very obviously lost in the hallways, a tall man walks up to us and asks, “Are you looking for Dr. ___ ?” We slowly nodded our heads, still confused. He sticks out his hand and comments “well, you’ve found him.” So began our first day.

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Breaking Bad (News, That Is)

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My stomach sunk. The results of the biopsy were back and it was not good. I had met Ms. Jones eight days ago when she was admitted for a pneumonia that antibiotics couldn’t seem to shake. Once hospitalized, we’d brought out the big guns and she had been clinically improving on that well-loved duo of vanc and zosyn. (Med students take note: vanc/zosyn is almost always an acceptable answer when pimped about which antibiotics to start – they may be overkill, but you’re unlikely to be wrong.) Despite her improvement, things had not been adding up – we kept putting 2 and 2 together and getting 6. A young woman in her late 30s, she had no good reason to have this month-long pneumonia and her chest x-ray looked, in a word, terrible. Even I as an intern could see that what had been a right middle lobe infection when she first presented a month ago was now also in her upper lobes and – oddly – her left lung was looking increasingly cloudy.

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