Surgery Scramble

Nick's first day of his surgery rotation began MUCH differently than he would have liked.

At 9:00AM he received a text from a fellow student saying "we're waiting on you, in the professional building." Well... Nick was still laying in bed with the belief that he didn't have anything until his scrub-in clinic at 1:00PM. Yep, apparently he had missed an email saying that there was an orientation starting at 9:00AM. Oops.

He was up, dressed, and out the door in under 5 minutes. I felt so bad for him. Surgery is an intimidating rotation WITHOUT being "that guy" on the first day. Luckily we live super close and he was there shortly after, but still nothing like starting out behind the 8 ball.

He said when he entered the room everyone just stopped and stared at him and shortly after the resident leading the orientation made a comment like "and be sure to be on time." Wonder who that was aimed at? Poor guy! After that the students were supposed to go meet up with different teams to follow and get a feel for the rotation- Nick didn't have his white coat as he didn't have any idea what to expect so before he could join the team he had to RUN all the out to his car, grab his coat and doctor stuff and RUN all the way back. He said by the time he reached the team he was a sweaty, flustered mess.

Anyone who knows Nick knows he HATES being late and HATES being unprepared. So that whole day from start to finish was his absolute worst nightmare!

Sooo... basically the good news is that it can only go up from there right?


Nick's surgery rotation goes from mid November-mid February. As part of the general surgery rotation it sounds like Nick will be jumping around through all different units, spending a week or so at a time with each group.

My current understanding of his schedule is roughly:

• Day starts early- he's out the door by 5:15AM to report in with his team at 5:30AM
• Tuesday mornings he has surgery clinic
• Days seem to vary a little on length but for the most part he won't be home until 6:00PM or so.
• He has a pager that goes off whenever someone comes in/something big happens (yay...) 
• It doesn't seem like he will work too many weekends- so that's a nice surprise! 

** We also know he will have 1-2 weeks spent on the night shift. This means he will report in around 6-7PM and stay until around 7AM.  And that he may have a handful of on-call shifts as well (still waiting on clarification of this one!)

His attire for the next few months!!! Much preferred to the dress clothes he wore last rotation! AND there is a scrub machine... so less clothes for me to clean... double win! Maybe the one perk to the Surgery rotation!

Internal Medicine Shelf

Wooo Wooo! Nick has officially written his first shelf exam of clinicals! IM was a great rotation to start with because it covers SO many bases and allowed him to dibble dabble in a lot of different issues. However, that made studying for the Shelf a lot more broad and a little less fun!

Monday Nick had his oral exam in which he sat down with one of his Attendings and was asked questions regarding a couple of the case reports he had written based on patients he had worked with over the past 12 weeks. This was pretty quick and Nick felt really good about it and got good reviews/a good grade! Woo!

The second part was the written portion which took place on Friday.  It was extra helpful because his last day working in IM was Tuesday- giving him all day Wednesday and Thursday to prepare. Nothing like a couple of good 10 hour days in the library to remind you that although you are in the hospital and seeing patients... you are still a student! haha.

The overall consensus from Nick and other students was that the IM shelf exam was EXTREMELY general and broad. They felt that on many of the questions they didn't really have enough information to answer the question (a sign that they are getting so super smart?!) But Nick feels like he did well and passed. From what I've heard it can take FOREVER to get grades back... so it may be awhile before we officially know how he did! 

Overall IM was a great success and Nick left with several letters of recommendation and many more great connections made!

Now for the next 12 weeks it's goodbye dress clothes- hello scrubs!

Happy Halloween 2013!

This was our first Halloween in our new house and first Halloween in a house period which means that we got to hand out candy to the super cute trick-or-treaters! Nick was able to break away from the hospital and put off studying for the night and so it was super fun quality time! During shelf exam study time any extra hang out time is such a great surprise!

Nick was the best candy hander-outter ever and sported my old cookie monster costume and used a hilarious cookie monster voice which the kids and parents got a huge kick out of! I was cracking up the whole time! My dad hooked us up with some candy and chips to hand out and probably partially thanks to the rain- we lasted a full hour and a half before we ran out! Go us! No hiding in the bathroom after 15 minutes for me :)

Although we didn't get to buy fun costumes this year or go out to the bar or any halloween parties it was still super fun and we loved seeing all the littles! Next year we will be toting around an adorable 6 month old- crazy! We've already begun the costume search... and let me just say... this baby is so lucky we are his/her parents... we won't produce any embarrassing high school graduation slideshow photos at all... ;)