Mile 7166: Teaching the Ropes

Above: A well deserved 7000 mile car wash.

I LOVE IT WHEN
THE TABLES ARE TURNED.

At points in the last four weeks, I've felt like I've become the intern at times.

Traditionally, every four weeks during our twelve-week rotation, we switch interns and teams to give us an idea of how rotating in a residency program feels. However, for the first switch after my first four weeks, we didn't switch teams. If we had, it might have been a mortal mistake.

Why? The caveat was that the timing of the switch matched to the time my hospital injected new interns into the 4-week rotation last month. When I say new, I mean "Just-Out-of-Match-2010" new.

Many of the interns at the hospital I am at had just simply survived a week of orientation at the hospital, and were all of a sudden thrown into the "real world." I have heard many of my friends who have gone through residency talk about the adjustment into residency and how hard it is, but here I was, along with six other medical students to see it first hand. I haven't seen as many blood shot and baggy eyes at any other point in my life than these four weeks! Some of them started to even question what they got themselves into (that was part of what I termed the post on-call syndrome.)

In some ways we knew more than the new interns.

Working four weeks at the hospital was actually four weeks more than some of the interns. Over the first four weeks, our rhythm on the wards was finally taking shape, we knew how the different rounds were scheduled, we knew where to grab the empty forms when needed, and we even knew the secret places in the hospital to get coffee. However, the most important thing that I saw during the intern switch up was how well we knew the patients on our teams; had we done the traditional team switch, that continuity of information may have been lost.

But over the last few weeks, it was odd to be teaching interns the "ropes" of the hospital. I mean, the interns knew a lot more about medicine (they finished school!), but I guess the working mindset is what we needed to teach them. The hospital world is now theirs, but now it it is time for them to make it their own. Each one of us medical students made sure that we gave the interns a framework to build on to make sure that their time at the hospital was successful. It was an odd way of learning for us students, as the last few weeks was a great lesson in learning how to teach.

Well, four weeks have passed. My intern has not only survived, but has changed since the first few days at the program; he's more comfortable with the ropes and is starting to get his rhythm with working the floors. But it's time for a new intern, and because not all the new interns for the residency IM program here have been on the floors, it's time to teach again for a second time around. It felt awesome to have been a part of my interns first four weeks in residency, and it felt awesome to be an intrinsic part of a medical team.

And here begins my last four weeks of internal medicine. I'll admit, its getting rather bittersweet.

Mile 6650: Aha! That could be it!

Above: The weirdest sign I saw on my May 2010 roadtrip. Talk about a one-stop tourist trap. Kissimmee, FL along Route 192.

It's been busy. There's no time to sit back and relax. Things aren't stopping. And for me, stopping could be dangerous.

BUT I LOVE THE BURN.

Week 6 here at my internal medicine rotation. I finally got the layout of my hospital down, know when and where to get coffee on my commute, what entrees at the cafeteria I should have/avoid, and even where the "secret rooms" are to do my work.

The importance of the IM rotation for anyone comes not in just getting to work in a hospitalist format, but also learning the art of medical thinking... something that I am still in awe of and want to master.

ONE CAN NEVER SAY A DIAGNOSIS IS CLEAR CUT.

It never is (unlike many medical dramas on TV put it). Its a common fallacy I run into. To me, Step 1 thinking is all about the "clear-cut" ness and classical cases, but coming into Step 2 and Step 3, things are completely different. If Step 1 thinking is taken into clinical medicine, fairly significant diagnoses can be missed, and one can head down the wrong road of management. Medicine kinda breaks the rules; it is unsafe to always think that X + Y + Z = A always. After a set of what we call "differential diagnoses" are given out (these are the lists of possible things that are going on), it is up to the clinician to rule out specific ones (especially ones with the most deadly prognoses along with the most common). A good set of differentials actually leads to better diagnostics and therefore, management.

Our tools to solving the patient's issues include the history we take on the patient, the physical exam, and laboratory tests. Each one of the tools has an advantage / disadvantage, usually measured in terms of cost (dollars and cents), usefulness of the info returned by the test, and time-to-benefit ratio (waiting 3 days for confirming something that might kill you in an hour isn't exactly a good thing). Some of the best clinicians I've seen at the hospital will perfectly balance all three by picking the right questions, exam procedures, and tests to confirm and rule out diagnoses (somehow they make the puzzle pieces fit). I'll admit, to use all these options efficiently is an art, and my mentors (attendings, seniors, and even the new interns) are always able to think of something I can't.

It's amazing that a lot of them say that the history is usually the best place to find out the diagnosis. However, even for the best clinicians, there are times where cases where the diagnosis is so unclear or takes an unexpected turn that a "Hail Mary" throw of tests needs to be done. But they're so good that this is usually last resort only.

The art of being a clinician is easy to put into words, but mastering it in practice is going to take more than 6 weeks to accomplish.

Mile 5998: Fritos & Coffee

Above: Roadside stands like these are available all thoughout Georgia. I get my load of honey-roasted pecans each time I pass here.

EVEN WHEN ITS ONLY FIFTY-DEGREES OUTSIDE,
MY WINDOWS ARE DOWN.

Every minute seems to blur into another, as the weeks pass by faster and faster. We're already in our third week (about to start our fourth), and it was only yesterday that I remember we were getting into the realm of things. The one thing I like about the internal medicine (IM) rotation I currently am at is that it satisfies the standards that I had set at Mile Zero on my journey very well. Doing this rotation actually makes me rather excited about IM. Our work on the floors has the quality of intensity, something I have been desiring for some time.

The following is a normal itinerary for me on a weekday.

6:00 AM - I leave home early. In Chicago, traffic accumulates with every minute lost in the morning, so this is the absolute goal for departure. Although I don't have to be at the hospital until 7:30, I'd rather do some reading in the resident's lounge than waste more time stuck in traffic. I usually get to the hospital about 6:30 AM, and when I get there, I'm loading up patient data from the computers and visiting the patients I'm following before my intern arrives.

7:30 AM - My intern arrives. The first thing he does is make coffee at the maker in the resident's lounge. On the table in front of the maker is an aluminum tray with a few juice cups and bags of snacks that the hospital delivers for the on-call team for the night. He usually isn't able to grab breakfast in the morning, so he grabs a bag of chips and opens it up for breakfast. Not leaving my resident alone with the morning ritual (even though I already had my Frosted Wheat Puffs and Ovaltine earlier this morning), I usually pull up a bag of Fritos (or Cheetos, as a viable alternate) and get a cup of coffee.

This is a superb example of a resident-recommended diet.

8:00 AM - I round with my intern, releasing the data from the labs I pull in the morning and the data I pulled on the history of the patients I'm following. These rounds are walking-intensive (involving going up and down several floors and down several wings) and can slow down whenever patient demands in the ICU or on the floor come up. I usually find myself walking around in "shadow mode" sometimes, leading myself to walk exactly in the footsteps of my intern (which could have me backing up into walls or other health care staff).

10:00 AM or thereabout - On some days, we have what they call "teaching rounds," with a senior attending physician along with our group of interns and students (about 8 in total), which involves a component of lectures, bedside patient presentations, and resident/student presentations. This is one of the lecture components provided. I believe that lectures are good to recap what's going on in the hospital. Getting lost in the demands that the rotation/residency provides is easy; we can't forget we have to learn every step of the way.

12:00 PM - We have another didactic lecture over lunch, on a hot health topic. This usually takes place in the lecture hall and makes our day more efficient, by giving us a good time to combine eating while our learning. Time management and efficiency is critical to operating and being successful in residency.

1:00 PM - I sit down and write progress notes on patients I'm following. The afternoon is usually left to admitting new patients, taking their histories/doing physical examinations, running actions/plans past my intern, and reading up on their cases. Medical education is very reliant on real cases, and that's a good thing. It's not the same reading about a topic in a book. Each medical case encompasses critical thinking skills and problem solving. Memorization won't get a physician anywhere.

5:00 PM - By this time I'm ready to leave the hospital if I did everything right. Sometimes there are exceptions, either late (or multiple) admissions, falling behind on notes, and the occasional assisting the intern, so he can get stuff done earlier. But in the end, I don't see the way I work with my intern as senior-junior, but in many ways it ends up as a team. I think that's just really cool, because that team combo has enhanced my learning experiences in medicine.

6:00 PM - After some time in traffic, I stop by one of the nearby Caribou Coffees or Starbucks and pick up a good iced coffee that powers me for the rest of the day. That night, I read up on primary literature for my cases and lectures, and I finally get to bed by about 11:00 PM.

And with that (and some occasional changes day-by-day), it's simply rinse and repeat for the next day at work. Weekends are a tad shorter (ending by 3:30 PM), but the same routine above follows. I'll be shooting out more specifics on what goes on during my internal medicine rotation, so stay tuned.

Mile 5855: Shortie: Whoa!

Above: Jurassic Park truly exists, Folks. Along I-65 in Kentucky.

THIS EXPERIENCE MAKES ME GO
WHOA!

I was talking to my friend Nik about not writing for 3 weeks, and I said to myself, "Wow, I went about 500 miles without letting you know where I went. That's kinda like going to Nashville and leaving you behind in Chicago."

Sorry. Let's get you caught up.

The last three weeks have been some of the busiest med schooling I've gotten so far. At a teaching hospital in Chicago, I'm currently doing Internal Medicine. The program set up is a shadowing of an intern both on the wards and in the ICU (depending on what patients are assigned to him). And I've done a lot of walking, writing, and paging (the last one's my favorite... I get to proclaim myself as a "medical student" on the phone!). I've seen some awesome cases at the hospital left and right, presented in front of interns and staff, and felt an intensity that I've been wanting to have in medicine for a while. Sometimes I get home with a load of primary literature I need to dig through!

But I'll tell you this, an intense rotation can be quite exhilarating, but it can also be more tiring too. All in all, the work here makes me love medicine so much more. My homework: get you some concrete examples of my experience this weekend. I won't leave you behind on the trip for much longer.

Mile 5318: Exploration - Part 2

Above: Capturing the Louisville, KY truss bridge on Northbound I-65.

A PICTURE TELLS
A THOUSAND WORDS.

Yup, that's an overused cliche phrase, but I'm going to throw some pictures here because its much easier to tell some of my highlights of my week-long adventure with a few pictures. Enjoy.

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Stuck on the Beach
After being sucked into driving on the beach (and seeing other sedans doing it too), I decide to go and drive on the beach in Volusia County. Unfortunately, "traction control" doesn't do the trick in sand... so after parking in a spot on the beach, I found my front, 1/8 a tire deep in sand. With the help of the Volusia County Beach Patrol and two random civilians, we got the car dug & pushed right out. However, you're gonna have to ask me how my car got stuck two times more after it was dug out the first time.

11 Countries, 2 Hours
At Epcot at Walt Disney World, my favorite theme park of all time, I decided to take the "Around the World at Epcot" tour, where I was trained to ride these nifty two-wheel devices called Segways (takes a little adjustment). Then a guided tour on the Segways was provided by the Guest Relations staff around the World Showcase of 11 nations (while it was closed to mainstream guests). I totally enjoyed slaloming through the pillars at the Italy Pavilion.

Up Close & Personal with Atlantis
Knowing that the Space Shuttle Mission was coming to an end, I decided to take an upgraded tour at the Kennedy Space Center to visit the space shuttle the closest most civilians could visit it (about one mile away). Apparently, being that close to the shuttle during launch would lead to my death (the vibrations and sound would kill me).

Seafood Galore
One thing about Florida was the abundance of fresh seafood. After eating at the Boston Lobster Feast in Orlando, FL (I ate a lobster, pictured above, that would have killed me first) and D.J.'s Deck in Port Orange, FL (under the Dunlawton Bridge), I got a serving of seafood that I would have not enjoyed as much at home. On a side note about food, it was awesome to stop at places like Shoney's and Western Sizzlin' to get my steak urge satisfied... but also to experience dining in a Southern cultured environment too.

Revisiting Undergrad
Visits to my alma mater of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign & a big ten university where I spent some time to do research (Indiana University - Bloomington) reminded me of the times I enjoyed during undergrad. It was good to see good friends, my former supervisors & research advisers (I actually saw one of them in Miami!), and places where I worked. The landscape have changed (e.g. like the skyscraper apartments pictured above on Green Street in Champaign), but the culture at both institutions still is something that has not changed.

Road Time
I love the road. There were points in my trip I found myself in the middle of nowhere, like in the picture above of Indiana State Route 46 between Terre Haute & Bloomington, IN. Driving through the country with the windows down is something I always wanted to do. My adventures included those to small towns such as Adel, GA and Manchester, TN. I even passed through a recovering Nashville, TN (from recent flooding).

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So folks, those were the best parts of my week off, but not even those highlights encompassed all that I did and the excitement I had during each of my excursions. However, I can't really put it in words yet, but I feel that I learned more about myself somehow through the explorations on the road. I hope that I can share my stories with patients with my next rotation and the future: the one, the only, the big one (at 12 weeks in length): Internal Medicine.

The adventure continues tomorrow.

Mile 5318: Exploration - Part 1

Above: One of the best highlights on the road was the "All Jacked Up" truck on Northbound I-65 in Indiana.

MYSTERY CREATES WONDER, AND WONDER IS THE BASIS
OF MAN'S DESIRE TO UNDERSTAND.
Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11.

At the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), I met Bob Springer, an astronaut that participated on a couple of Space Shuttle missions with NASA. At the KSC, guests are able to interact with real astronauts and ask them questions. With my curious (and sometimes over-curious) personality, I decided to pull a question on him and immediately raised my hand when the floor was open for questions.

A man with a microphone walks over, and puts the black device in front of my face. Looking up at him on the stage from my seat, I then asked, What types of medical monitoring are done on astronauts in space?

As the man pulls away the microphone, Mr. Springer on stage starts to talk about the types of research astronauts have performed in space. Although he probably misinterpreted my question (I was asking about measuring heart rates, respiratory rates, etc.), he produced a very intriguing answer as he started talking about how astronauts have studied the effects of bone density in space, the concept of "space motion sickness," and effects of gamma radiation on astronauts in space. I couldn't tell you how much that stuff started to spark my medical neural pathways.

I got to meet Mr. Springer firsthand at a photo session afterward. After he told me that I asked a great question, I told Mr. Springer that I would definitely look some of this research up when I got home. The task is still on my list.

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After leaving Miami last Friday, I had a week off between rotations. I decided to take it to explore places, do things, and basically not be a medical student for 1858.7 miles on my journey. (If you were wondering why I didn't blog for a week, that's why.) I did everything from learning to ride on a Segway, getting my car stuck in the sand on the beach, seeing the space shuttle on its pad ready for launch, seeing how airlines train their pilots & staffers, and even meeting a cashier at Wendy's named Zzyzx. I took a week to do stuff I would never get to do in the hospital.

But my journey wasn't just about what I saw or experienced, it was also about the people I got to meet along the way. I visited people I haven't seen in a while, friends and former supervisors/advisers that really made my experience on the trip. I thought that a hearty visit would be more than appropriate to thank them all for all that I have done so far. But for me, when getting involved in loading my brain with medical info, I have found it easy to forget myself. Seeing all of them was a good refresher, as many of them reminded me of who I am as a person and what personal qualities helped me get to where I am today.

At first it might seem rather superfluous to include my vacation miles on my journey, but for me, time to explore more about myself (and be myself too) is a huge part of my development as a doctor. I'm not just a doctor or a provider. I'm also me. So, tomorrow, I'll tell you more about some of the specifics of my journey, but for now, my Ford Focus and I are going to get some sleep. There's a lot to process from my week retreat.

Mile 3452: Answers on the Asphalt

Above: I-95 Northbound near Brickell. An overhead shot of this strip was used in the TV series Miami Medical.

FOLLOW-UP PATIENTS
ARE MY FAVORITE.

A patient that I saw a few days ago comes in for a follow-up. He/she looked excited to see me, and that brought a smile to my face. A firm, solid handshake confirmed the camaraderie. A few weeks ago, I saw this patient in a much different state, rather sick with severe pulmonary & cardiac symptoms. Earlier in the rotation, I said to myself that I hated the idea of moving on, and well here was another case of it. The last time i saw him/her, the patient had smoked for more than 20 years and didn't want to quit. Now, he/she was just starting to quit, and I was so proud of the initiative, I had to shake his/her hand. Gosh, I was about to build a good patient-doctor relationship here, and now I have to leave. I started to get to know the patient's family, culture and more, and I would have loved to see the progress that he/she was having to reclaiming his/her own life from smoking...

I'll admit that interaction today was a good ending to a wonderful rotation in Miami. My last two weeks were spent at a more conventional medical center in the Miami area. However, our attending taught us a lot of practicality in medicine while we went through it (why we avoid certain medications, the business aspects of medicine, and just to be more confident in what we do). Now, I know how it feels to start to "want to do everything." I got hooked to treating adults too. I'll admit, that its still early in the game for me, but I hope that a week on the road can give me some answers. Driving has always been my way to think deeply about all that goes around me... There are times I think so much that I just let the dashed white lines in the road come to a blur.

Road? Yup, I'm about to start on a mini-vacation, to be myself for a week (not a medical student), think on the road, and get ready for 12 weeks of Internal Medicine which will take place at Westlake Community Hospital near Chicago. Throughout my trip, I'll be seeing some time at campus I've been at (the University of Illinois and Indiana University), meeting a few folks that helped me to get where I am today, and exploring the world in ways that I haven't been before. It's going to be exciting. However, as much as I love to travel, I miss Chicago. It's my town, Chicago is.

Thank you Miami for a wonderful experience. May the travels begin.