Five Weeks In

I'm in my last week of Family Medicine and I'm ready to be done.  I've enjoyed my time working with the residents and attendings.  I end up doing a fair amount of menial work, like rounding up patients, looking up labs, or wasting an hour on hold with the ultrasound department wit ha phone that has no speaker, so I have to hold it to my ear the entire time, but at least I'm appreciated.

I have not enjoyed working with the front office staff.  It's always fun to wake up in the morning and go to the hospital, so you can be belittled by people who do not have the mental capacity to handle what you do.  My having no recourse is one of the main reasons they do it; I can't complain to an attending or resident that the front staff is "being mean to me", so I suck it up.  I guess because they can't talk back to the attendings, they stick to taking it out on the med students.  That's cool, in a couple of years, they'll be stuck doing what they do, and I'll be moving on and up.

One of my major assets is being able to work with the technology in the hospital.  Like my brother said, you can be smart as hell, but attendings love the med student who can fix their computer.  I've seen it first-hand.  I've fallen in favor of at least two attendings for fixing their computer.  I've also seen a resident who gave me a hard time, switch it up quickly after I fixed his printer.  Being a nerd has its perks.

Although it's been a good experience.  I have not learned too much medicine, but I have learned how to function in a hospital and also, more important, how to deal with difficult people.  Mainly, the disingenuous kind who smile to all the doctors, but will shit on you not because they have to, but because they can.  Life lessons learned at no cost.

I'll looking forward to being back in California to enjoy time with the wife and family.  My little niece keeps getting bigger in every picture or video I see.  I didn't know six weeks could change a kid so quickly.

As one rotation comes to an end, I'm also learning that I'll need to find a specialty.  Family medicine requires one to know a lot about a lot of things.  I would prefer to know the details of just one organ or body system.  More power to the family doc, but I don't think it's in the cards for me.