And it begins again

Today I was at a family doctor’s office, starting my Wednesday afternoon shadowing experience for the semester. My supervisor is very nice, though all business (she didn’t ask me anything about myself), and she’s a fast talker so I can tell it’s going to be a bit different from last year. While I was impressed that she stayed on time throughout the afternoon, I felt like sometimes she was a bit rushed and I felt like my head was spinning by the end of some of the appointments. I hope the patients didn’t feel the same, though from some of the comments on ratemds.com they share my experience. It’s interesting to have the opportunity to shadow people like this so I can compile a mental list of “do’s & don’ts” for when (if?) I eventually end up working. Unlike my last supervisors, this doctor sees maternity patients. AND when I asked if I could join her on one of her 24 hour on-call shifts in the hospital to see a delivery, she said sure. Yippee! I haven’t even been in the hospital doing any shadowing and given that lots of my classmates have (or at least that what it feels like since I haven’t yet) I feel like I need to do this. I think I’m worried about having a fainting spell in my first surgical experience or something. For some reason, I think it might be easier to explain away or avoid some embarrassing nickname like “Stop‘n’drop” if I do this in 2nd year vs next year at the start of hospital rotations. Maybe I just want to practice the “deer in the headlights” look that I’m going to perfect next fall. Anyway, I’m hoping that my eagerness hasn’t just led me to voluntarily signing up for an all-nighter (or more than one) in the middle of the week. Hopefully I get to witness some baby being delivered like clockwork around supper time so I can be in bed by 11pm. Yeah right. If life was like that…. Another thought I had while seeing the rotating door of patients coming & going is that even though I’m interested in family practice more than other specialities, I’m not too keen to have a practice of my own. It seems like while there’s a lot of variety in the complaints, your day looks the same - everyday. Hopefully I can find some interesting combo of management & medicine in a salaried position so that I can shake things up a little. Or maybe I’ll just go to Africa. (I know ¾ of you are nodding your head saying “I can see you doing that.” But I don’t know if I can see myself doing that. I’m not sure I’m brave enough since I’m such a wimp around my own safety. My bear phobia already leads me to wear earplugs when camping so that raccoons & squirrels don't scare me out of my wits. I’m not sure earplugs would bring me much peace of mind regarding wildebeests & scorpions.) We’ll see. At this point I just need to make it through my December exams. First things first. :)