Weblog » Archives » March 2007

  • In the name of education

    For reasons mostly related to my program director and the recent revelation of my in-service exam scores, I have been bullied and scared into reading (or at least wanting to read) more. (By reading, I don't mean novels …

  • Culturally (in)competent

    The elderly man showed up unexpectedly with three family members to the urology clinic with a Foley catheter draining bloody urine. Apparently he had been seen in the ER two days previously and had been told to come to t…

  • Switchfoot

    In one of the earlier (and best) episodes of Scrubs Season 1, J.D. comments on how nurses start out being smarter than the clueless, fresh-faced, know-nothing interns; but then after a few months, "everything you learned…

  • Popularity

    In a grossly blatant attempt to increase readership, I've gone out and joined a score of blog rings.It may not be entirely obvious as to why I joined the blog rings that I did; for instance, unless you knew me in second …

  • An actual conversation

    One of my fellow interns and I were eating at a local sports pub."Hey, do you know Ralph O'Brian?" he asked me."Uhh, no. Why?""He's one of the visiting R3s, an Irish guy, on trauma now.""No, haven't met him.""Oh, well, h…

  • Bloody tip

    Ahh, urology -- so many stories, so little time...The ER woke me up last night when I was on home call.Hey man, I got this guy, a prisoner, coming in with three days of hematuria, and, uh, he's got like a stone stuck in …

  • Why I feel bad for nursing students

    Being a medical student can be one of the most painful things on the world: standing around pointlessly in the hospital trying to look like you know what you're doing and that you have the authority to do whatever it is …

  • Somatiform

    All you have to say is "chronic pain patient" to any resident surgeon and you'll hear the groans. Patients who have chronic pain syndromes do indeed suffer from real pain, but it's the sort of pain that is difficult to c…

  • On/hard

    You only have to be on the urology service for a few days before you start collecting some good stories.One night, I got a frantic call from one of the senior ENT residents. She told me about an unconscious patient in th…

  • Diploma

    In applying for a California medical license (which I must obtain by the end of the year), I had to show my original medical diploma to representatives of the Medical Board of California. As I carried my framed diploma d…

  • Lost, again!

    For the second time during my internship, I've lost my stethoscope. I'm pretty sure I took it off when I was exchanging my dirty, crusty (but still long) white coat for a newly laundered and pressed white coat at the sup…

  • A dream

    I guess I must have been unconsciously nervous about my first day of work after four weeks of vacation. (Actually, I wasn't all that unconsciously nervous...I was more consciously nervous.)I slept poorly the night before…

  • The end

    And so it ends. Four weeks without attending rounds, without alarm clocks, without patient censuses, without having to worry about my beeper falling in the toilet. Four weeks of vacation ends today.I spent my last day of…

  • In-service, deux

    Thursday morning found me sitting at the desk of one of the plastic surgeons, utilizing his computer to take the American Society of Plastic Surgeons annual in-service exam. This is more or less the same thing as the ABS…

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