Starting My Last Year of Residency, Starting the Job Hunt, and Oh Yeah I Transferred Residency Programs

Yes, I’m alive. I know it’s been a while since I’ve written anything. I actually have a ton of drafts of all these posts that I started to write but never ended up publishing. This was mostly because I just didn’t had time to finalize any of them, and by the time I did have time, they weren’t really relevant anymore/I wanted to sleep and/or eat instead

But, a lot of things have happened since the last time I posted. I can’t believe the last time was when I was a fresh new intern.

Oh intern me, so many things I wish I could warn you about

I decided to compile a list of things that I’ve done or things that have happened since I last posted. I’d say most of them are positive experiences. In any case, they all helped to shape me into the third year resident that I am today

• I don’t remember if I ever posted about this (maybe on instagram?) but I got my puppy right before intern year, and was able to raise him successfully throughout the year. I get a lot of questions regarding my experience with this, mostly if it’s possible to have a dog when you’re a resident. Honestly, yes you can. But it obviously depends on what kind of dog you get, what your specialty is, how intensive your program is, etc. The highlight of a busy day was being able to come home to a happy doggo
• I took and passed Level 3. Bye bye NBOME
• Lost 8 pounds during my first rotation as an intern. Yes, it was inpatient medicine, yes it was stressful, and no there was not a lot of time to eat.
• There was this one messed up day where I was the only intern on the medicine service when all the IM residents were taking their in-service training exam. I had to round on all the patients from one of the teams and write all the notes. I think I had finally finished everything by lunch time. It actually wasn’t even a ton of patients, I think 13? In retrospect, I’m actually surprised how well that day went
• Survived q4 28 hr calls. This was during one of my hardest rotations as an intern- pediatrics. We had to rotate through Rainbow Babies & Children’s which is the stand-alone children’s hospital for Case Western. I do not recommend commuting home 30+ minutes after not sleeping for that long
• Got physically assaulted by a pt’s family member in the ICU. This happened when I was an intern, in Ohio. Over there it’s considered a misdemeanor for first-time assault on a healthcare worker. I ended up not pressing charges
• made medical errors and got yelled at
• Survived a midwest winter with a rear-wheel drive car and no snow tires. While going to my graveyard ED shift one night, I braked at a red light and slid straight through the intersection. Good thing there were not cars and/or pedestrians
• Ate hospital graham crackers for dinner
• Decided to transfer to another residency program.  I interviewed at a couple places and ended up accepting a spot at Ventura County Medical Center. I’m still trying to figure out how I got so lucky
• ran some bad Tier I traumas that I still think about
• ran codes and rapid responses
• learned how to be the senior on a team while teaching interns and medical students
• emergently intubated patients
• emergently put in lines
• delivered babies without an attending
• first assist on surgery
• took a cockroach out of someone’s ear
• got married!
• started applying for jobs

I’m going to try to post a little more often on both my blog and Instagram account now that I’m finally getting used to the work flow at my current residency program. I’ll also try to be better about answering messages (sorry!). If you guys have any specific topics you want me to talk about, let me know

RS

First week as an intern

Well, I survived 8 straight days of inpatient IM. I’m not going to lie, it’s been a little rough. At my hospital, the interns are responsible for admitting patients and typing up all the notes. This can be a little overwhelming when you also have complicated patients with sh*t hitting the fan and nurses paging you about what you want to do, in which case my answer 90% of the time is “Uhh..let me verify with my senior”. Speaking of the seniors, I honestly have no idea how us interns would survive without them. They have been AMAZING. They’ll help us with notes, admit patients when we’re too busy, and generally just try to make things easier for us. In such a cut throat world like medicine I’m so glad that there are still some good people out there.

On another note, I’m still a little weirded out by being referred to as doctor. I specifically tell the nurses to call me me by my first name. I even feel weird parking in the doctor’s parking lot, or going to the doctor’s lounge to get food. I feel like such a fraud, I’m sure the medical students rotating with us know more than I do.

For the M4s out there auditioning this year- you can help the residents out a ton by seeing patients with us and writing notes. We currently have a fourth year student auditioning with us and she’ll see up to four patients and have the notes already done by the time we finish rounds and noon conference. You guys have no idea how much it helps us out, especially when we’re getting slammed with admissions. Being a team player is a BIG deal. Of course, we’ll put in a good word for you with the chief and program director when they ask for our feedback. I also try to point out some of the interested cases to the M4s so they can see something different than the standard chest pain or heart failure workup.

Anyway, today is my first day off and I don’t get another one for another 8 days, so I’m going to go enjoy myself (read: do laundry, pay bills, basically do adult things), even though all I really want to do is sleep all day. Yay, intern year!

Medical Student to Intern

For the past week, I’ve been in orientation with my co-interns, including those in IM and EM. It’s been pretty chill. We got training in our EMR system and got set up with our dictation device, Dragon. We also had a white coat ceremony, where we each got our shiny, new, long white coats! Yesterday we got our pagers (boo) and were taught how to use them and return a page. I’ve gotten to know a bunch of the other interns, and I can say that we’re a laid back group of people. I’m excited to work with them!

Now that it’s July, we officially start residency. Even though I’m am FM resident, we still have to do 3 months of inpatient IM, which is what I start off with. You can’t see my face but I’m super excited to be starting on inpatient medicine, no really, just…so excited…

I ended up getting the weekend off, so I don’t have my first day until Monday. This kind of worries me in that the other two interns on IM start over the weekend and I’ll have a lot of catching up to do on Monday when I get there. Since I’m FM, I haven’t had to do a real IM rotation for a while, and only did one as an M4 and just our standard core IM rotations as an M3. I feel kind of screwed, and the panic is actually fueling my desire to cram as many internal medicine topics as possible. The other two interns working with me are actually IM interns and I will be the only non-IM intern on the service. This means they’ve probably done at least 6 months more of IM and IM subspecialty related rotations compared to me. Fantastic.

Anyway, I just wanted to say good luck to all the other interns out there who are starting residency. We can do it! Also if any seniors or attendings have tips for surviving intern year, let me know!

Life After Medical School

First off, sorry about the radio silence. The last couple weeks leading up to graduation were all a blur. From trying to hang out with classmates one last time, to getting my recertification in PALS, BLS, and ACLS, to having family flying in, plus coordinating my entire move to my new residency location, a lot of things went on the backburner (like blogging). But now I’m back, with more free time than ever!

Secondly, I’m officially a physician!!!

It feels weird just typing that. I mean, I knew I was going to be a doctor after 4 years of medical school, but it’s still such a weird feeling. I haven’t even changed my email signatures yet; I can’t get myself to. They still say I’m a medical student. The other day I got asked by my insurance agent about what my official job title is, and I hesitated before saying resident physician. There’s just a lot of responsibility that’s implied with that title and I don’t feel qualified. I was a medical student a month ago! The imposter syndrome is real, and I haven’t officially started residency yet.

In other news, I finally added my account-related instagram to the side bar. I’ve been anonymous for the past 4 years, but now that school is over and I care a lot less about people knowing who I am, I figured it was officially time to show the face behind the blog. So hi, thanks for reading and following, and stay tuned for what I’m sure will be posts about me freaking out during intern year.

ACGME Match Update

A couple weeks ago, I flew out to attend my fiancé’s Match Day celebration. It was kind of fancy- it took place in a nice hotel, with a brunch-like spread of mini quiches and smoked salmon on little toasts. Even as an outsider, I could sense how incredibly tense people were. Everyone started off with catching up with their classmates and meeting their families. Once things settled down, the Dean and some faculty members of the school gave a few speeches about how proud they were of the class and that in a matter of minutes- everyone in that room was going to know where they were going for residency training. Once it started getting close to the official envelope opening time, the students all gathered together with their academic groups alongside their faculty mentor. One by one, each student’s name was called and they were handed their respective envelope. They were instructed not to open it until specifically told to. After a couple minutes, everyone chanted and counted down from 10…9…8…7…

My fiancé completely destroyed his envelope trying to get it opened. The result: he matched back home, in Southern California! Although this means we’ll be doing long distance again, we’re both super grateful to have matched at our top training programs. Now I’ve got my own list of To-Do’s for the next month:

• Find a place to live/sign a leasing contract
• Find a mover (my program will pay for part of my move! Yay!)
• Order my long white coat. It’s nice that they actually have a women’s fit option with an adjustable two-button back belt…Pretty sure I’m the only person excited for this.
• Acquire dog. Yes, I am finally getting a dog. I could never justify getting one during medical school- board exams, class exams, other school obligations, rotations, interview season- I could never find the right time to get puppy and raise it. But now, I actually have the time! Moreover since my fiancé is going to be far away from where I’ll be doing my residency, not to mention my close friends and family, I think it will be nice to have some company. If everything goes according to plan, I’ll have a new pup around the second week of June!
• Start selling things. I have so much…crap. Anatomy flashcards, embryology and biochemistry books, old class notes, shelf exam study materials, the list goes on and on. I feel like it would be a huge waste to just toss everything, and I really want to make some more room on my self, so I’m thinking of selling them to other students. If you’re an incoming M1 or a current student, please subscribe for updates as I’ll be publishing a post with a list of things I’ll be selling!

For those curious, Nova also had a Match Day celebration. Although much less formal than other schools, everyone who RSVPed was able to receive their envelopes and open them with friends and family. I heard it was a lot of fun!

Congrats to my classmates! We’re almost done!

-NB