Hi Guys,
Yesterday I finally got to the business of getting through orientation at my base hospital here in Cleveland. Fairview Hospital is Cleveland’s version of Inova Fairfax so Mary Renard Riley Renard will understand my description of this place. It is enormous with tons of wonderful departments. All of the patient rooms are private and most of the patients are up-scale suburban. Since I am in a private practice track for General Surgery, this hospital is tailor-made for my training. The team doctor for the Cleveland Indians practices here and has freely offered us the opportunity to hang out with him at the home games. This could be fun if my schedule permits.
As with Inova Fairfax, all of the attending physicians here are private. While not all are part of the teaching service, meaning that we don’t have to cover all of the patients in the hospital, the ones who participate in the teaching of residents are good teachers who enjoy their teaching responsibilites. Clinical research opportunities abound here and there are plenty of folks to do your library searches and the like.
My fellow residents are a super bunch of people. We have two chief residents at this hospital who are very strong guys. We all work together as a team so that everything is covered. I have offered my PGY-1 colleages all of my resources for getting comfortable with their PGY-1 duties. It was my experience that if you start off with good habits, they tend to stick with you and you get to a level of high efficiency very quickly.
My duties are to operate and learn. I am in an environment that allows me to learn and grow professionally. I will also get some solid experiences here that I would not have gotten at UVa though I find myself missing everyone there but I know that equally wonderful people are here. There really isn’t that much difference between these two residency programs except the support staff for the resident physicians is much stronger here. There is also less clinic work for surgical residents too. Again, my duties are almost totally in the hospital which is a good thing.
Next door to the hospital is a very large and wonderful park. It was cool, clear yesterday with plenty of bright blue skies and sunshine. We had a small picnic out on the deck next to the Surgery Department. The lush greenery of the park was a nice backdrop and we all enjoyed sitting in the sunshine, eating grilled burgers and just enjoying a small bit of the beautiful day. Since is was Wednesday, many of the residents were able to stop by and say hello to us that are coming in. They are wonderful folks that I am going to enjoy working with. I will be posting some of my adventures in SOAP notes but right now, it’s all good!
Natalie 
Natalie,
I look forward to reading more on your continuing story. It is always an inspiration.
Kathy
I totally agree! 