Transformation

Moving from third year to fourth year: Regular people might not realize the significance of this but other doctors and residents and nurses know that there is a difference between third year medical students and fourth year medical students worth noting. Third years are new to the whole clinical scene. Third years are not only learning medicine but they are learning where the bathrooms are, how to write notes and orders, how to get a list of really handy phone and beeper numbers, passwords for all kinds of electronic medical records systems, how to present cases. Fourth years are still learning all of this but they have been through one year of it already and that counts for a lot.

I remember sitting in the ER during one of my first admissions in Internal Medicine and painfully, slowly struggling through trying to figure out how to write the orders this guy would need to get admitted for his heart failure or COPD exacerbation or whatever was going on with him (still not 100% sure). And I remember being aware of the resident and attending who were graciously sitting there with me while I painfully, slowly struggled. They had to make themselves sit there and let me get through it. They had to literally sit on their hands and I am eternally grateful for that.

A few days after that I picked Ms Perpetual Motion up from grammy's at the end of another long, tiring day and just wanted to get home where it would be time to feed the dog, make supper, try to herd a wild child inside while I cooked so she would not drown in the lake while unattended and of course Ms Perpetual Motion wanted to buckle her car seat buckles herself. And she could do it, I knew that, but it would take longer and I had to sit on my hands and let her struggle through it so she could learn how to function in this world and my tired ass would just have to wait (supported by my hands of course).

I will be starting my fourth year rotations soon and Ms Perpetual Motion will be going to an organized preschool type deal soon as well. I am just hoping we are both prepared enough.