Surgery – 12 weeks
previous rotations: Obstetrics & Gynecology, Family Medicine, Internal Medicine
I just realized I’m about to finish my Psychiatry rotation next week and I haven’t even shared my Surgery summary yet! Slacker.
The photo for this post was taken with my phone from a top floor in the hospital and is a good reminder of how long ago I started this rotation. January was cold and snowy!
daily schedule:
7am – 7pm
actual daily schedule:
7am – pre-round on patients
730am – meet with attending for morning surgeries
(break sometime in the middle for lunch)
1pm – afternoon surgeries or outpatient clinic duty
5pm – round on any patients you didn’t see during the day
what to wear:
Hospital-issued, surgically-sanitized scrubs. In the OR, you’re obviously going to wear a mask and cap, with a purdy sanitized gown and gloves.
what’s in my pockets:
- stethoscope
- small notebook with a list of patients, labs & data
- pen
- phone with Epocrates Drug Reference
- Maxwell’s Reference
patient notes you will be asked to write:
This is like a condensed IM SOAP note. Rounding on post-op patients is similar to regular rounding, with a pretty thorough subjective and objective assessment. Be sure to include ins & outs from the previous 24 hours, as well as pain control. The assessment and plan tends to a be more truncated than primary care rounding because you really only focus on the problem you dealt with in surgery.
what to study:
I didn’t study much during this rotation. Glanced through Kaplan’s First Aid for the Wards, but mostly read topic-specific stuff assigned by my attending. He was a general surgeon so we dealt with a lot of guts and gallbladders.
a few unforgettable things learned along the way:
I have to admit I was a little distracted during this rotation with the news of the pregnancy (my surgery attending was one of the first people to know at 7 weeks and the rest of the team shortly after) and planning of Step 2. I really enjoyed this rotation and feel like I learned a lot, I just didn’t write it down as I went along. So, I’ve forgotten it all already. *sigh*
curious things other students do:
- show up late
- complain about every. little. thing.
- spend a lot of time on their phone