Hanging in There

I'm sort of getting the hang of things....

I have decided that being the House Officer is a really awful job. My first 24 hr shift was last Sunday...and it was CRAZY busy. We were actually slow all day long until about 7pm...when things starting picking up. I ended up not having ANY sleep. In fact, I couldn't sit down for more than 2 minutes at a time. Tons of people got admitted...and I was in charge of all of them. I had people seizing on the floor at the same time other crazy things were going on. It was overwhelming and awfully tiring.......

I learned quite a bit though...and I figure that is the whole point!

Outside of house officer shifts, it has been a little busier on my Orthopedic service. In fact, they let me scrub in on a Total Hip Replacement and Total Knee Replacement last week. That's right.....little ol' Emergency Medicine intern got to scrub some big ortho cases! I learned that the scrub nurses don't get to see outside interns too often....only the general surgery, OB, and orthopedic people....so they liked having me around. Especially having a female around. It was pretty fun to get back into the OR....I really do like blood. Is that sick?? =)

The rest of the month should go pretty well. I have learned what is expected of me during this month and I feel like I'm doing a good job right now. The best thing is that all of my house officer shifts are done for the month....WOO HOO!