Secret Day Off

Shhhh...!!! Keep it quiet, let me tell you a secret...I have an extra day off this month! Sort of. Because our patient census is reasonable and I worked an extra 6 days, my senior gave me an extra and unexpected day off today. I had no idea what to do all day, so I just kind of watched the day go by. I just got all of my errands done on Wednesday, so I didn't even have laundry to do today. I have no idea what I like to do outside of medicine (aside from running - which I did do today), so I was like a lost kid all day. ("Do I cook? I think I remember that I used to enjoy making things to eat... Should I organize some things? Maybe I'll do my taxes..." )

Something new from this week is that our students have come back on service. I enjoy teaching students, and I have a really interesting patient right now with a disease we don't see often (it's my first time seeing it as well). So when I discovered that one of the students was also going to be seeing that patient, I got excited and started asking him all sorts of questions, trying to help him learn about this interesting case. Instead of seeing an enthusiastic and interested student, I got basically silence and disinterest from him. Imagine someone being dead excited about something they've never experienced before trying to spread that enthusiasm to a wall. That's basically what was happening.

...I guess not everyone gets excited about medicine...I think this guy will find he fits right in with psychiatry, all he is interested in is stories the patients tell. Gosh, I mean, what's wrong with people?! MEDICINE IS AMAZING. duh.

I've had two separate occasions this week of nurses doing their best to report me. First one was a nurse (who I thought liked me!?) who shouted at me for not wearing a gown in a room with influenza. I had to calm her down and remind her that flu is only droplet precautions and that I did have a mask on within 3 feet of the patient. I couldn't believe it; me, who follows every rule all the time and never EVER does anything half assed. Then another nurse gave me trouble for ordering an immunosuppressant for a patient who has been on this medication for YEARS. The only reason I was dosing it myself rather than putting in a standing order was because the nurses kept giving the medication 3 times more frequently than I had ordered, causing the patient to have some undesirable side effects. Rather than slapping that info in her face, I just said to her that the patient has been taking it for a very long time and I'm giving this medication to her just as it has always been prescribed to her, and I had even double checked the dosing with her primary doctor to be sure that we were doing things correctly as well as monitoring her levels of the drug. Seriously. Get off my back!haha But it's kind of nice that they actually communicate these things with me; early in the year, nurses are a female interns worst enemy and it takes a long time for them to even acknowledge your existence. So I suppose this is a step up!

But, on a much brighter note, two NICE things also happened this week...I received a phone call from a nurse asking me to address an issue she had with medications for a patient, which she had been calling about to the other doctors for the previous two days. I was the first one to tell her why we hadn't made the changes she suggested, and she thanked me up and down (and without even mentioning my name, she knew who I was). She was happy to talk to me. I love when we can all work so well together in a team. Seriously love that. The other thing that made me blush happened during rounds. During my pre-rounds, I had spent quite some time with a patient explaining his diagnoses and our treatment plan and what our goals realistically are, etc...so when we went to round with my attending, who also is my program director, he was explaining these same things to the patient. The patient interrupted him and said "yes, I'm aware of all of this. The doctor standing beside you already told me everything you're telling me. You've got a great doctor there" and my program director just smiled, said "I know she is", and shook his hand and walked out of the room. I felt so competent, so much job satisfaction! It's nice to see the extra things I do don't always go unnoticed.