Weekending at the hospital

I don't have much to report about my weekend unfortunately. I worked 12 hour shifts at the hospital on Saturday AND Sunday… bleh. And my next day off isn't until Saturday. Thats 7 straight days of [unpaid] work, woof. Enough complaining, I technically signed up for this when I began PA school, right? I thought I'd give you guys a glimpse into a normal on-call day during my inpatient internal medicine rotation.

Before I began this rotation I was unsure of what it would entail. It's basically caring for people that are hospitalized due to chronic illnesses such as congestive heart failure (CHF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), chest pain (we always rule out heart attacks before sending them home), complications with diabetes, etc.

5:10am alam goes off… ughhh. Get ready, eat oatmeal, pack a snack

6:10 leave the house and head to the hospital

6:40am report in the physician's lounge for "check out". This is when the residents that were on night shift let us know if anything changed with our patients over night. We hope there is nothing to report because no news is good news, right?

7:10am Log on to the hospital computers and check on all my patients for the day. Look up all their lab values, radiology reports, nurse's notes from overnight, and any other tests or scans we ordered.

8:00am Go see all my patients. Make sure nothing has changed with their health status, see how they're feeling, and do a physical exam on them.

9:00am Report back to the physician's lounge and write notes on all my patients. My attending should be arriving soon. This doctor is at the top of the "ladder", above me and the residents I'm with. We report our patients to the attending, let him/her know how our patients look/feel, any changes in lab values, what we want to do with them that day, etc.

10:30am Go back and see all the patients with the attending. This usually takes forever because we have anywhere from 5-15 patients to see that are scattered all over our huge hospital. Families are usually in the rooms and are prepared with long lists of questions to ask the attending. It is usually the attending, myself, a medical student, an intern (1st year resident), and senior (3rd year resident).

1:00pm Grab something to eat. Usually pre-packaged sushi or a salad… not a huge fan of hospital food but it's not awful.

1:30pm Head back to the lounge and put in orders. This includes anything that the attending wants to order after having seen the patients including labs, x-rays, CT scans, procedures, medications, etc. After putting in all the orders, I update notes on all our patients.

4:00pm This is when we usually have people that need to be assessed in the ED (emergency department). On the days where my team is on call (every 4th day) we are responsible for seeing all the patients that come to the ED that the ED physicians think need to be admitted for serious medical conditions. When we get paged by the ED physicians we head down and do a full work-up on that patient. This includes getting a history, making sure we know all the medications they are taking, do a physical exam, order labs and tests, etc. If we decide that patient is in serious enough condition to be admitted, we have a bunch of paper work to fill out to get them a room.

7:00pm Report back to the overnight residents and physicians about the current state of our patients. This includes any pending lab results, tests, etc.

7:45pm Get HOME where my amazing husband has dinner already prepared. Eat, shower, pack my bag for tomorrow.

9:30pm The best part of the day… GET IN BED. My feet are throbbing and my back aches. It's hard to fall asleep after drinking 5 cups of coffee throughout the day. Whew. Not ready for that 5:10am alarm.

slightly dramatic, but this is how I feel 99% of the time… 74 more days #ithinkican

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