#24 / #25: University versus Private
On Monday I started a month-long rotation at a new private. The hospital where I spend the other 11 months of the year is a University hospital located in a college town while this new hospital is the only Level 1 trauma center in a nearby city with population 275,000 people. There are a lot of really cool benefits of working in the new private hospital:
1) The structure of the rotation is greared so that there are four more senior residents and only one intern. This is the first time that these residents are allowed to manage patients on their own and they don't like letting the intern (me) make a lot of decisions. That translates into very few pages during the day for me and a lot less work directed towards the intern.
2) As a result, I get to be the first assistant on several cases during the day without interruption. True, the cases I get (hernia repairs, hemorrhoidectomies) are not as glamorous as the cases that the senior residents assist on, but it's great experience for me to get to the operating room.
3) There is free lunch every day and free breakfast three days out of the week for surgeons.
4) Call nights at the University hospital are characterized by a seemingly endless stream of calls from nurses. Many of the calls translate into "Please do my job for me." At the private hospital, I don't get any of these calls because for some reason all of those calls go to the senior resident on call. Instead, my responsibilities are to see consults and to go to traumas that arrive in the emergency room. As a result it's a much more intellectual exercise for me.
The trauma experience at the new hospital is really interesting and exciting. However, I don't have much experience with traumas so I have a lot to learn. Still, there's nothing like being the first people to evaluate gunshot wounds and knife wounds and car crash patients - both terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. I've also had the chance to assist on several good operations like a laparoscopic removal of gallbladder and laparoscopic removal of appendix. One of the attending physicians lets me do a lot of the operation by myself which is totally amazing.
Last call night I met a patient at 2:30 AM. The guy had appendicitis and he was shivering, in pain, and vomiting all day long. We took him to the operating room at 5 AM (when it was available) and my attending let me do a lot of the operation. I saw the patient at 11 AM and he was without pain, comfortable, and we had curing his disease. It was such a great feeling to be able to cure the patient and a great feeling to have more responsibility in taking care of patients in the new hospital.
Last call nights Monday October 2nd and Friday October 6th.
Amount of sleep last call night: 2.5 hours and 1.5 hours.
Currently reading: Greenfield's Chapter on Anorectal Disorders.
Currently watching: Enterage Season 2.
Next call night: Tuesday October 10th.
1) The structure of the rotation is greared so that there are four more senior residents and only one intern. This is the first time that these residents are allowed to manage patients on their own and they don't like letting the intern (me) make a lot of decisions. That translates into very few pages during the day for me and a lot less work directed towards the intern.
2) As a result, I get to be the first assistant on several cases during the day without interruption. True, the cases I get (hernia repairs, hemorrhoidectomies) are not as glamorous as the cases that the senior residents assist on, but it's great experience for me to get to the operating room.
3) There is free lunch every day and free breakfast three days out of the week for surgeons.
4) Call nights at the University hospital are characterized by a seemingly endless stream of calls from nurses. Many of the calls translate into "Please do my job for me." At the private hospital, I don't get any of these calls because for some reason all of those calls go to the senior resident on call. Instead, my responsibilities are to see consults and to go to traumas that arrive in the emergency room. As a result it's a much more intellectual exercise for me.
The trauma experience at the new hospital is really interesting and exciting. However, I don't have much experience with traumas so I have a lot to learn. Still, there's nothing like being the first people to evaluate gunshot wounds and knife wounds and car crash patients - both terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. I've also had the chance to assist on several good operations like a laparoscopic removal of gallbladder and laparoscopic removal of appendix. One of the attending physicians lets me do a lot of the operation by myself which is totally amazing.
Last call night I met a patient at 2:30 AM. The guy had appendicitis and he was shivering, in pain, and vomiting all day long. We took him to the operating room at 5 AM (when it was available) and my attending let me do a lot of the operation. I saw the patient at 11 AM and he was without pain, comfortable, and we had curing his disease. It was such a great feeling to be able to cure the patient and a great feeling to have more responsibility in taking care of patients in the new hospital.
Last call nights Monday October 2nd and Friday October 6th.
Amount of sleep last call night: 2.5 hours and 1.5 hours.
Currently reading: Greenfield's Chapter on Anorectal Disorders.
Currently watching: Enterage Season 2.
Next call night: Tuesday October 10th.
posted by Stephen Maturin @ 10/08/2006 01:11:00 PM
2 Comments:
At Mon Oct 09, 07:30:00 PM 2006,
Anonymous said…
congrats doctor on the new hospital. u cant beat a free lunch.
At Wed Oct 11, 03:54:00 AM 2006,
Anonymous said…
someone's getting a little lazy with the "let me just squeeze in three nights of call per blog instead of one"...you have an audience to answer to!
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