… ,on a friday evening, was the most humbling experience of my life. People were sick, smelly, crying, hurting, and above all “most” of them were unable to perform the basic functions.
I held a patient with perforated bowel while a nurse was cleaning her. I cannot describe in words how much respect I have for nurses after this experience.
Also, watched and helped patients with cardiac / thoracic and pancreatic surgeries.
This week I also shadowed a physician performing an ERCP. 
Now, time to focus on school — have not taken a “real” test in ages!
Watch out, the ICU is addictive!!
- tec Said:
Watch out, the ICU is addictive!!
Tell me about it. after my month long rotation, I was torn between emergency medicine and pulm/critical care.
In the end, I decided to go to critical care.
Wow, Gabe! It’s a late decision change. But good for you! Glad you figured out the things.
And I have to agree with Tara! ICU is addictive!
When I was rotating through surgery as a 3rd year medical student, I did 2 weeks of transplant, and 4 weeks of trauma. On both of these services tones of patients ends up in ICU. Ultimately it was my experience on trauma that made me choose surgery as a career.
As a 4th year medical student I rotated through surgical oncology and a great experience. I am pretty sure that after my general surgery residency I’ll want to continue into surg onc fellowship. In fact, residency programs’ success in placing their graduates in surgical oncology fellowships was a big factor for me in choosing places to apply to, and it’s going be a huge factor when I prepare my rank order list for the match.
But coming back to ICU…
I did a 4 week rotation in STICU (surgery trauma ICU) in December and … it was amazing. I started seriously thinking about surgical critical care. The good thing is that in many programs I’m applying to, including my top choice, there is an option of doing 1 year critical care fellowship during the residency… which I might seriously consider…
Someday (fingers crossed and eyes shut tightly) I will post about “rotations” rather than “volunteering”.
Although, I strongly feel I will still be volunteering a lot.
- ChicBrownie Said:
:) Someday (fingers crossed and eyes shut tightly) I will post about "rotations" rather than "volunteering".
Although, I strongly feel I will still be volunteering a lot.
Although, I strongly feel I will still be volunteering a lot.
Volunteering is good ;). Enjoy!
And the rest will come in its own time...