CORS

This was our notorious rotation where we all pretty much dread it.  The word on the street is that it's draining, do what we are told, don't think, and pretty much be ready to be yelled at.  Oh, it's a 12 + hr day 5 days a week for 4 weeks.  Thankfully, I only have it for 3 weeks before my 1st real vacay since residency.

I've got Drs Hull/Gurland service, which is a good thing in that there are usually not that many patients on the list but it's a service where every detail has to be approved by the staff and the staff has know about it. Needless to say, it was stressful for the first week, since I haven't been on a surgery rotation since as a 3rd year student and I have no idea what to expect.  On top of that, I've got a fellow who is probably one of the laziest one I've had.

The classic moment is when my fellow asked me to go down to radiology to look at CT abdomen to confirm a leak with the radiologist but I'm not surgery intern and I have no idea what to look for.  So of course, got yelled at when I reported what I was told by the radiologist. This happened 2 more times.  This should totally be something that the fellow should do because they know what other questions to ask and how to look at the scans.  It's not something a nonsurgical intern should do.  Later I found out that he should have been the one to do. Oh well, live and learn.

We were told that we do not go into the ORs with the fellow or staff; we just manage the floors.  So of course, my fellow asked the first day if I wanted to go into the OR.  Heck, no.

One last thing that really irked me was my fellow asking me do help with discharge summary.  PAs used to do it but they are so overwhelmed that the fellows are now doing them.  My lovely fellow asked me do it but our instructions specifically said that we are not do them since they have to include surgical info since we don't participate in those.  I almost got into an argument with my fellow over this.  I don't know how many times I have to stand up to him because of the inappropriate things he had asked me to do. Ugh.

Other than my fellow, my staff warmed up to me and really trusted me with her patients about the 2nd week. She would specifically page me before she rounds and asked me to do pain management at my discretion with some of her patients.  She also sent me short emails letting me know that she thinks I'm doing well.  She wrote a good eval to my program chair at the end.  I just felt that I haven't done anything different for any other patients or staff.  I guess I'm glad that my attitude paid off.

Overall, this was an exhausting 3 weeks. I'm glad this is over and that it was during winter, it didn't matter that it was dark coming in or leaving the hospital.