First Rotation!

I started my first rotation yesterday - and it's psychiatry at Detroit Receiving Hospital.

And....

I LOVE it!
It has been awesome. I honestly love being in the hospital and seeing patients, and my preceptor is so great.

Here is what our days have been like so far:

- Park about a mile from the hospital and take a shuttle with other medical students to the hospital.

- Try and remember where we are suppose to go.

- Wait for our doctor to come in and quickly tell us we are going to see patients (and we literally have to pop up and start our sprint).

- Follow our doctor (a psychiatrist) around (at practically a run) and he asks us questions all day, and we dont know very many answers - but he is patient and teaches us - and then re asks us later in the day (and we usually remember the answers).

- See interesting patients including: a  patient who is seeing cats running across the floor in his hospital room,  a patient who thought he was brought by a boat with his friend (which I assure you he was not), a patient from prison who had banged his head and cut it open and keep picking open the stitches with his nails, a patient who had attempted suicide with drugs with her boyfriend (who died), a patient who had voices telling her to kill herself with rat poison, and a patient who wanted a new room because there was a "big, black, insect hanging from the ceiling".

- Continue to chase around the doctor all day - by now my legs and feet are killing.


- Try to answer his questions, while furiously writing things to look up later in my little notebook.

- Eat my packed lunch in this little back office and totally enjoy sitting down. Use the restroom - we dont have any time to all day. I am pretty sure he would not slow down to give us enough time to use the bathroom.


- See other patients including  combative patients who need medications adjusted (usually increase in Haldol), patients who are way too sedated with their medications (usually decrease in Ativan), patients dealing with tough diagnosises (we saw and amputation, and a girl who just had a stillbirth).

- Watch our doc do wonderful interviews with patients. When they say crazy things, he just listens and clarifies. He asks them if they know where they are, who they are, and what the date is first with everyone. Then he asks "how the voices are", and if "they see any family members in the room with them at the time", "if anyone is telling them to hurt themselves", and always asks about suicidal and homicidal ideation.


- Get a lesson in something, yesterday and today it has been depression. The doc actually takes time and prints us a PowerPoint and gives us a lesson. Which this is pretty awesome, because he does not get any reimbursement from Wayne for having students, and I am sure he must get paid a lot if he would see patients, so it is pretty great he is taking time to do this!

- Done! Ahhhh, so great. My legs and feet can hardly move.

- Take the shuttle back to my car. Battle crazy Detroit drivers and get back to my apartment.

 Eat. Study (and read blogs). Sleep (yesterday I went to bed at 7:30, and had to force myself to stay awake until then -pathetic I know!)


We get to start seeing our own patients on Thursday (and charting) in the morning and then do rounds and present the cases to the doctor in the afternoon. I am pretty excited - and a little nervous!

This is the beautiful Detroit Receiving Hospital - very interesting there! 



Here is Harper Hospital - which we haul to like every other patient, what a walk!