Multi-Tasking Galore June 29, 2009

Today was definitely really my first day as a doctor!  I arrived at the hospital at 5:30 am in order to meet the team and get ready for postpartum rounds.  I did a pretty good job: saw all of my patients, used an interpreter phone for the first time, and managed to only be 2 min late to rounds.  Considering the other intern was about 15 min late to rounds, that 2 didn’t feel quite so scary.  I only got interrupted for more details on one of my patient presentations, and the rest went smoothly!  It was so cute, the new cheif clapped for me after my first presentation as a Doctor .

So after rounds, I met one of the patients in labor.  I got started on all of my notes… the goal in the first few days is to have all notes done before rounds.  I finally managed to get all of my notes, daily orders, discharge papers, discharge prescriptions done.  In the interim, I was paged about patient’s diet, taking a shower, starting benadryl, new triage patients and more.  The rest of the day I was in triage seeing patients. I’m so thankful for the midwife because she really held triage together as I was pulled away for postpartum issues, and of course: deliveries!

I had the smoothest deliveries today.  Both of the women weren’t on their first baby, so those tend to go pretty quickly.  What made it exciting is that these were the first 2 deliveries that I ever performed as a doctor!  Amazingly enough, neither of them had lacerations.  Of course, like I said before neither were on their first born, but still, I was impressed.  The great thing about the L&D at my hospital is that we have midwives.  So far they know what they are doing and these moms are having smooth deliveries.

I wish I could say that I would be having more of this, but I will be starting in the clinic tomorrow!  It’ll be some time before I’m actually on the L&D service.  Overall, I had an amazing day.  I pulled a 13-hour shift and really didn’t feel tired until I got in the car and thought about it some.  Can’t wait for what the rest of the week holds.