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BadVB750

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  1. Attending Physician
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So, what rotations have made you consider self harm. I'm in the PICU and the micro management is killing me. I started carrying around a cynanide tablet with me, I almost cracked it when we rounded for the third time in 12 hours.
 
Everybody's got one. Mine was OB/Gyn.
 
BadVB750 said:
So, what rotations have made you consider self harm. I'm in the PICU and the micro management is killing me. I started carrying around a cynanide tablet with me, I almost cracked it when we rounded for the third time in 12 hours.
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I never had a rotation where I wanted to kill myself. Everyone else, on the other hand...:meanie:
 
I second PICU. I had one month in the first part of my second year, and one month in the last part of my third. My second and third years were partially ruined by dreading that second month of PICU.

To make it even more painful, the second month they had switched to physician order entry, making it not only hand-holding, but mouse-holding. It seems that I would put in each order 4 times until it was finally right. At the end of the month, I felt like begging the nurse, "Please, here is my pass-word, you know what you need, and what the attending wanted, make it happen."
 
My geriatrics month while on medicine. Less so, but still pretty terrible - neurology. Oh, and our required nursing home days... i'm talking FULL days spent at a nursing home... to add to the misery, my attending there was a very depressed psychiatrist ("oh, it's great you're not going to do psychiatry... I actually wanted to do peds but ended up with psychiatry... I hate it, sometimes I think about just quitting and moving away, i'm so so miserable... sigh, sigh... oh it's awful" - every day, over and over again).

::shudder::
 
Psych. Terrible. Miserable.

The rest were okay so far. Just that when the last week came, I'll just say I was ready for it.
 
PICU was depressing and boring. Every patient (at least at my institution) was a congenital-defect baby that underwent open heart surgery. Every day we micro-managed epinephrine drips so that they could live for 1-2 years before dying a horrible death.
 
I'll join in on the psych bandwagon. I did rotations at our VA and university hospitals. I don't think we actually DID anything for any patient except keep them in the hospital, fed and warm. I don't recall discharging a single patient. That's my biggest issue with psych - there's so little that can really be done for some of the really chronic crazies.
 
EM2BE said:
Psych. Terrible. Miserable...
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NateintheED said:
I'll join in on the psych bandwagon. I did rotations at our VA and university hospitals...
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Huh. I just finished Psych at community hospital, and I was impressed. I was amazed at how some patients went from completely disabled to coherent and functional. Granted, about half of them came back a week after discharge because they "felt good" and stopped taking their meds...🙄
 
I haven't had OB yet (up next) so we'll see how I feel after that. But so far family medicine was the one that made me want to poke my eyes out.

Psych for me wasn't too bad. I was in at 930-10am-ish and out by 1pm at the latest. 👍
 
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My worst rotation was SICU. I got along with the fellows great, and they made my life a ton easier, but pre-rounding to atending round to post-round to senior-resident-round to teaching round was a pretty nasty day. We also got 10 million lectures on why a Texas catheter was better than a foley catheter.... There was a huge picture window at the end of each hallway that we always looked out and imagined how long it would take us the hit the ground 5 stories down.
 
I just did a lateral canthotomy. That's what I thought this thread was going to be about. Oh well.

OB-Gyn just sucked. Psych was a painful but easy rotation. PICU hurt me in residency.
 
Midwest Medic said:
My worst rotation was SICU. I got along with the fellows great, and they made my life a ton easier, but pre-rounding to atending round to post-round to senior-resident-round to teaching round was a pretty nasty day. We also got 10 million lectures on why a Texas catheter was better than a foley catheter.... There was a huge picture window at the end of each hallway that we always looked out and imagined how long it would take us the hit the ground 5 stories down.
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LOL there was just a patient who tried that at the hospital I am at now. I think he is having second thoughts now about his rather poor decision.
 
I absolutely hated inpatient general medicine. There is something inherently unnatural and unethical about preserving the lives of floridly demented and irreversibly debilitated centigenarians with no qualities of life who if left for one minute outside the hospital would instantaneously croak. There was no medical sleuthing. No intelligence required. Just a lot of NS bags hanging, and a lot of defecation cleanup for the poor nurses.

Inpatient psych sucked too but the hours were grand; I showed up at noon and left at two. So did the attendings.
 
PICU is the only rotation that made me cry. Then the attending asked me why I wasa crying, which just made me cry harder. I was crying because I hated him (the attending), my fellow (an evil, burnt out b!tch who would walk around chanting "I am dead, I am dead" in the rhythm of the monitors) and the fact that my favorite patient had died. Could I actually say any of that? No, so then I was crying and frustrated. Great combo. Grr. 🙄
 
Ditto PICU. Rounding for hours, prolonging terminal illnesses, no procedures, taking call. It's the anti-EM. That being said, glad there people who want to do it.
 
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