I recently finished up working as a hospitalist scribe through Scribeamerica at a community hospital and I'm realizing that it was like a perfectly tailor-made way to be exposed to inpatient medicine. Basically I worked 3 12-hour shifts per week (the hours sucked at first but I got used to it) and spent the day following the daytime hospitalist around, documenting each patient interaction as well as the doctor's assessment and plan, consultations with specialists, conversations with nursing staff and whatever else was relevant. The best part was that working multiple days in a row, you could follow a patient throughout their entire hospital stay starting with admission from the ER, and ending with discharge once they've hopefully improved. In this type of hospital there's usually a small number of doctors so I developed a strong relationship with each of them, and so we'd have days ranging from really busy seeing a number of sick ICU patients, to days where there weren't many patients, so the doctor, staff and I would just hang out (tbh it's possible I learned more from the docs those days than when we were actually seeing people). Couldn't recommend it highly enough if you can find a program near you!
