Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Direction

Well, I've enjoyed paeds neuro so much for the past week and a half, that I am thinking this may be it. I will decide over the weekend if I should just go for it. If I find I'm not so crazy about it after another rotation, I can always take a year off.

Cases are very complex, and come to the clinic typically undiagnosed. After spending time in surgery, where the cases were mostly 'done' by the time they got to you, it's a refreshing change, and more or less provides me with the main thing I wanted out of meds.

Funny, surgery seems to be about black and white: he has this, we do this, in this way. Things that fall into grey areas make surgical people nervous... and sometimes angry. That attitude is pretty desirable in the OR, but ultimately fails to satisfy me. I like the greyness of uncertainty that you find in the most complex cases. Heck, my life is spent living in grey, so it's what I'm good at.

Anyways, how can't you enjoy a profession where you get to test for the Moro reflex every time you meet a baby?

As an aside, the number 9.51 keeps coming up for me. What is the significance, I wonder?

5 comments:

Marysienka said...

What do you mean taking a year off? When are you supposed to choose your residency? Your program looks so different from mine... How is your clerkship supposed to work, do you only have optional blocks?!
You're right about surgery being black and white, and I'm like you on this point, I like the "greyness" of other specialties... Even though I like using my hands every once in a while, I'm more a "thinker" than a "doer"... And I still like working with kids more than adults ;-P

Tall Medstudent said...

By taking a year off, I mean after graduating, doing a year of just electives etc, then doing the Carms thing a year late, instead of this December.

It's not very practical, though...

We have ten weeks of elective in total. Our core rotations are generally fixed, except for surgery and internal. Surgery, we have three weeks of 'selectives', meaning that we have to choose between ortho or plastics for two weeks, and between urology, neurosurg, vascular, or something else for one week.

That isn't too bad, although I think that nobody gets exposure to both ortho and plastics, unless they take up elective time with one of them.

Internal is where I think it gets bad. I'll do renal and ID, and general internal consults (i.e. pre-surgery checkups probably), then a month of MTU (medical teaching unit). The MTU time is supposed to give us a taste of everything, but really, I'm going to graduate without ever having done cardio or GI or ICU. I think that sucks.

And, if you want to do any radiology, pathology, or emerg... good luck! You have to use up your electives to do it. I think that really stinks.

The three year system must be eliminated, that's all there is to it. It sucks.

Maybe I can figure out a way to do surgical assists one day a week in the future...

Marysienka said...

omg that doesn't make sense! I'm so glad to have a 5 yr program... so you're doing the carms in a few months and you still don't know what you want to do? :o/ I don't think you have time to have enough exposure in your system...

Anyway, have fun in obstetrics! Even though I loved the course, I would never live from this specialty...

Tall Medstudent said...

Right, it makes no sense whatsoever. It sucks! Augh!

Oh well, I have to live with it now...

Isiah said...

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