All of these people who say they have/had days with zero patients... that's in-patients, right?
The most I've had so far is 12 in one day -- 4 in-patients (3 existing, one transfer) and 8 appointments. I've literally never had a day where I have had none. A few rotations have minimal paperwork (ambulatory, ophtho, anesthesia, diagnostic imaging) but that doesn't mean no cases.
I can't even imagine a day without patients on something like Small Animal Medicine. There are typically 8-10 new overnight transfers a day from ER, and that doesn't include appointments or long-term in-patients who are being transferred from other students when the rotation ends.
What's even the point of being there if there are no patients to see?
I had my first day without a patient on Thursday. I'm on cardio and its procedure day on Thursdays. Due to COVID rules, only a limited number of people could be in the OR. We have 6 people on cardio at my school. So the student with the dog and a student with a camera were in the OR. The rest of us were in the rounds room, watching the surgery and chit chatting all day.
It just really depends. We have 133 students in our class, and probably 30 island students from there. Some services only have 4-6 students (onco, cardio, neuro for me) and that's a good number to see a lot of cases. Others have 7-10 (anesthesia, surgery, and internal med for me) and some times 7 isnt enough students cause we get so slammed.
@SportPonies had the neuro block before me, and they were drowning. When I was on neuro, we didnt get called in a single night, and only had 2 surgeries the whole block. There have been 3 transfers for soft tissue surgery every day this week. We didnt have a single transfer the entire time I was on soft tissue.
Covid has drastically changed things cause we simply cannot be as efficient and therefore cant physically see as many patients. Only half the surgery students can be in the hospital at a time, and they switch out at 12 or 2 (soft tissue vs ortho). So if your surgery time changes due to emergencies or literally any reason, you can potentially go through all of surgery without scrubbing in once. Happened to my best friend last block.
Regardless, there has to be something to do in a hospital instead of sitting in the lobby for 12 hours at a time? Check on a patient, hold a dog for a classmate, help someone write their discharges, read an article and talk to a resident about it, stand in ER by the lab machines and offer to run blood work, etc etc.
Most of these arent an option for us cause of COVID policies or because of other appointments going on. Because of how strict the university is with COVID, they are trying to limit the number of people present within the hospital if at all possible. So some services you only do half days or are sent home early/come in late if your appointments allow for that. There is absolutely no mixing of services beyond what is necessary (which is limited to begin with due to the interconnectedness of our hospital). And while we may only have 1-2 appointments, our house officers have 4-6. So our didactic rounds are limited as they have 2-3x as much appointments and paperwork as we do.
To a certain extent, it can be a make your own adventure, but its limited here. Our clin path lab runs all blood work except NOVAs, which are run by ER. Consults (mostly) can only have 2 students, one from each service involved. Services do allow for teamwork, but it only takes 2 people for a physical exam.
It's an unfortunate situation of luck of the draw/fate. I dont really think there is an overarching solution for those of us that have those days where we have zero patients or the blocks we dont have a high case load.
