I’ve had things to write about but why I choose to do so many things as a resident is beyond me.
I started my Emergency Medicine rotation over the past two weeks, much to my personal dismay.
Emergency medicine is one of those specialties people idealize outside of medicine, sort of like they do surgery. Lives being save, choices made on the fly, drama, speed all that jazz. It’s a fast-paced specialty, filled with providers who have to know enough about it all.
What you don’t see is the multitasking, disorganized hell that my, specific brain cannot handle. For anyone who has those abilities to keep everything linear despite chaos, I applaud you. But for me, it just doesn’t click. The discontinuity also doesn’t do it for me, though I like the leave it at the door mentality. Everyone has their thing. This one just isn’t mine.
I’ve been on for two weeks at this point, one week of days and one of nights. The first week was kind of slow-paced. Days tend to be that way in pediatric ED in a community hospital. It’s reflected on the floor because we normally don’t get a ton of admissions during the day, but at night it’s so variable. I spent a lot of time just seeing patients at a pace I am not quite accustomed to, but provided with a way to become more efficient. In terms of “doing things” there wasn’t too much of that.
Nights was a totally different story.
Brief intermission, between my day and night week, though, I did do a 24 and got like 5 hours of sleep which is amazing. A miracle.
Anyways, nights were so much more active than days. I sutured, feet, hands, and face. I helped reduce nursemaids elbows and assess active respiratory distress. I can see why EM would feel appealing in that environment because it feels so much like what we expect medicine to feel like. Which feels good.
Paperwork doesn’t feel nearly as good.
I’m still a huge fan. I have two more weeks left with hopefully more chances to do things, but we will see. As of now, I’m just taking each day as it comes.
Medicine With Sass 
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