Modern Medicine

I am starting my clinical rotations tomorrow and I am pumped!

For the past two days, I have been super busy packing my stuff to move out to Baltimore since I’m doing a 6 month program out here where I am doing rotations through 4 different specialties –Family Medicine, Oby/Gyn, Internal Medicine, and Pediatrics.

There is a lot of uncertainty heading into my rotations, but overall, I am optimistic and excited to learn as much as possible. In this article, I’m going to talk through what I am thinking, some of my expectations, and the mentality that I am going in with.

To provide some context, the first 1.5 years of medical school are similar to undergrad where you take a bunch of lectures and focus on the basic sciences that provide the foundation for clinical medicine. Once you take step 1, you then are able to transition into clinical rotations where most of the learning takes place in the hospital interacting with patients, nurses, and doctors.

Personally, I didn’t like sitting at home studying for the first half of med school. I learn much better when I can motivate my learning with real life problems and interactions so I believe the wards will be a great place for me to learn. I love interacting with people too, whether it will be with doctors, nurses or patients.

The main advice I’ve heard from past students and residents is to not be annoying and try to be helpful as a 3rd year. I’ve also heard that I should try to learn as much as possible and not be afraid of making mistakes because this will be the best time in my career to do that.

My mentality going in is to carry myself as if each rotation is a speciality that I want to go into. I think this is the best advice I heard and that I intend to follow.

Some more concrete goals I have are to be proficient at 1) oral presentations and 2) physical exams. I think it will be super neat to be able to not only report relevant labs but to interpret them for my presentation and have a differential diagnosis and management plan ready for each case.

I know that I will stumble over my words at times and look stupid as I attempt to do my first neuro exam, but I look forward to these moments too because when I look back, it’s these mistakes that stick in my memory and eventually provide some of the best learning experiences.

That is all I want to say about rotations for now. On another note, I’ve been thinking about this blog and what I want to do with it. My intention is to continue making posts each morning –I know, ambitious, right?– but I’ve been enjoying the process more than I thought I would and think it is making me a better communicator.

If you have questions for me or want me to write about a specific topic, please reach out to me! I would love to hear from you!