The calendar says July 2010. Oh how the time has flown. This time last year — has it really been a year ? — I was still on my vacation, and getting a bit ancy and nervous about starting my clinical rotations in the hospital. I mean, I was actually going to talk to real patients, real people, with real diseases!
This July, I’m ancy, nervous, but excited as well because I’ve had a year of seasoning on rotations, and the countdown is ON. It will officially be 10 months until I graduate from medical school, and get my degree, and start being called ‘doctor‘. It had always seemed so far away. Before I ever got accepted into medical school, I would dream about the day I finish medical school and wondered if I would ever get there. There just seemed to be so many obstacles in the way. I was worried about interviewing, getting accepted, finding enough financial aid to pay tuition, applying for visas, moving to a new country, living 600 miles away from home.
And here I am, a mere 10 months away from that moment. So excited, but so nervous. I’m officially a fourth year medical student now. I’m now doing what are called audition rotations from now until December, basically rotations at clinics and offices of potential places I will be applying to for residencies. It’s an opportunity not only for the doctors and faculty of those residency programs to get to know me, but also a chance for me to see if I would like them!
My first stop is back in Michigan, at the residency program I did my third year of med school as a student. It was comforting to see some familiar faces — residents that I’ve worked with before on other rotations, such as obstetrics and gynecology, and from all the lectures we attend. The first day however, I definitely had the butterflies. I got a brief orientation with the program director, who on first impressions lived up to his reputation that preceeded him. I talked to friends and classmates before that had great things to say about him and the other doctors.
There is another fourth year medical student on the rotation with me, and he is also interested in applying to this program and becoming a family doctor. I had a hard time that first day thinking about first impressions — was I making a good first impression? Was the other student making a better first impression? How do I compare to him? I found that I was comparing myself a bit too much to the other student.
The next day however, things were much better. I focused on just being myself, relax, and things will come much easier as I got to know the doctors a bit more as I worked with them. So I have finished the first week of 4 here in Michigan, and I really like the teaching that the doctors do here.
On every single patient I see, after I present the case to the attending, they take a lot of time to teach important points about not just the science and physiology of the medical aspect, but also the social aspects and the thinking process behind planning out what I should do with the patient. I’ve learned how to deal with some difficult patients who seemingly act in certain ways with some unknown motive. My next stop will be a relatively rural town in Pennsylvania. I’m looking forward to my next 3 weeks here, and then it’s off on my whirlwind tour of Midwest America!
