Is anyone else as lost as I am?????

[golgi]

Just started my transitional internship last week. I started on general medicine floors and I don't know my head from my a*&. Does anyone else feel this way? I can't seem to know enough about my patients before rounds even thopugh Iget to the freakin hospital at 6:15 to preround. This is ridiculous. I slacked in med school but was generally a strong student and am pretty efficient. However, the floors are killing me and I am lost. I forgot all my medicine and am dumbfounded when paged by the nurses. I knew it was going to be tough but never thought it would be this horrible. The only thing that keeps me going is knowing that I will never have to go through this crap after this year but don't know if I can get through one more month of floors as well as the dreaded MICU. Does anyone else feel this way? Is this normal or did I just get dumbed down beyond repair as a 4th year? Please any advice?

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[Obedeli]

yep! gotta sleep now. Time off is precious.

 

[Blade28]

I felt the same way the very first day...but you just gotta learn to be efficient, and really know your patients well. Oh, by the way, you get to the hosptal at 6:15 to preround? We have to be done prerounding by 6.

 

[golgi]

I'd like to hear from those who are on the medicine floors. Surgery rounding, although much earlier, is not as detailed and complicated as rounding on the medicine floors.

 

[pikachu]

yes, and yes -

Internship is giving me proof that M.D. stands for what I always thought it did -"Meaningless Degree" - every time I get paged I'm dreading what's going to be on the other end. mostly a nurse who thinks I'm a complete idiot.

 

[Blade28]

Hey, nice sig pikachu! You from Hawaii too?

 

[pikachu]

I wish - I was taking a virtual internet vacation the other night and came across that saying - my dad always used to say it to me (in English) when we would go to the beach. It just seems somehow appropriate for internship and I thought it looked really cool in Hawaiian

 

[serenity]

It has been 15 days on floors for me,and I am still feeling lost.
I am expected to remember five things at a time,the labs are not in till 1100 hours, start with the progress notes after 1300 and when I have greater than 10 patients it takes me forever........the beeper........(I wish it never existed)
New admissions can be killing as well.
No offence,but how do people do medicine all their life!!

 

[deleted4401]

I'm just on a consult service (a ridiculously busy GI service), but I feel pretty overwhelmed sometimes. The most recent attending pretty much singled me out as a ***** pretty much the whole week. I feel the same way - did I learn anything the last four years? I thought I was a decent medical student ...

God, I start nightfloat on Wednesday night and I just hope I don't hurt anyone. Thank god it's just cross-coverage, and the residents handle the admissions. I'm nervous as hell, though.

Anyway - I think most people are in the same boat, feeling pretty incompetent... I hope it gets better

Simul

 

[DOtobe]

Hey, nice sig pikachu! You from Hawaii too?

Just out of curiosity, what does pikachu's sig mean?

 

[Blade28]

Just out of curiosity, what does pikachu's sig mean?

Never turn your back on the ocean!

 

[EPA7X1]

I was told that I was a strong student as a fourth year. Now I'm not so sure. I'm in the ED, and I feel like I'm in slo-mo at times compared to the speed I need to be moving at. And my dictations are crap. Hope no one reads them.

It is getting easier every day, though. There is at least one patient who thinks I'm awesome. And a few of the nurses have taken a liking to me.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who feels like this.

 

[southerndoc]

There is a very steep learning curve during your intern year.

Relax, you will learn more than you can imagine! I'm sure you are a lot better than you give yourself credit for.

 

[August_Bier]

EPA7X1, that is exactly what I am going through right now. And my dictations have so many ehhhhh and ahhhhhhs in them - the transcriptionists must be scared to get one of mine...

I was told that I was a strong student as a fourth year. Now I'm not so sure. I'm in the ED, and I feel like I'm in slo-mo at times compared to the speed I need to be moving at. And my dictations are crap. Hope no one reads them.

It is getting easier every day, though. There is at least one patient who thinks I'm awesome. And a few of the nurses have taken a liking to me.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who feels like this.

 

[Annette]

At the beginning of internship, I hit the learning curve and slid DOWN it!

My first year as a senior, I was pretty amazed at how quickly the interns did learn things, even though they kept telling me they were lost. This year has been the same. Do you realize how much you have to learn and be responsible for???? It took me two months to figure out the layout of the hospital. You won't really feel good about how well you do your job for at least 6 months, maybe more. For the d**kwad attending who made you feel like a *****, he either is testing you to see where you are , or has issues.

If your labs aren't getting back until 11am (your lab must really suck!), order the bloods to be drawn at 3 am. Your patients and the nurses may not like it, but you need the data to make appropriate decisions for your patient. Ask your residents about little tricks to help you be more efficient. My hospital has tablets that you can sign out for the day, which made rounding for me easier, because I never had to find an open computer. Get your discharge papers ready as soon as you can, usually in the post rounding afternoons. Continue practicing dictating, it is much faster, and more complete than writing out the h+p, etc. Don't worry about what the transcriptionist thinks.

I promise you will feel more confident by the end of the month.

 

[imagin916]

Just wanted to say good luck to all of you, don't get yourselves too upset, before you know it you will be through this first year. I am a nurse so I cannot say that I have gone through what you are doing, but I work at a large teaching hospital and have become friends with residents from all over the hospital, and I see what they go through and how much they progress in that first year, and by 6 months in you will feel like an old pro. Dont take too personally the attitudes and crap that you get from people, I guess it makes them feel better about themselves to belittle someone else. I always try to make the interns feel welcome, and I dont like it when some of the nurses are mean to them, its unneccessary and dont think that we are all like that, we are not. Anyway, take care and keep us updated on your progress!

 

[Annoyances]

Just wanted to say good luck to all of you, don't get yourselves too upset, before you know it you will be through this first year. I am a nurse so I cannot say that I have gone through what you are doing, but I work at a large teaching hospital and have become friends with residents from all over the hospital, and I see what they go through and how much they progress in that first year, and by 6 months in you will feel like an old pro. Dont take too personally the attitudes and crap that you get from people, I guess it makes them feel better about themselves to belittle someone else. I always try to make the interns feel welcome, and I dont like it when some of the nurses are mean to them, its unneccessary and dont think that we are all like that, we are not. Anyway, take care and keep us updated on your progress!

My first month has been total hell with only a few positive moments hope my next one is better though it's not since I've gotten all weekend calls (. Anyhow, the nurses at the hospital I was at were great and I loved them all they were soo much help. I hear unfortunately those at the next hospital I'll go to are not and are infact sometimes verbally abusive to interns as are the other senior doctors. Life sucks as an intern can't wait for this crap to end.

 

[Mirror Form]

hey at least we're finally getting paid for this

My first rotation as in intern turned out to be an elective in the field I'm going into next year, so I'm actually loving internship so far. But there's less than two weeks until my general surgery rotations start . . . ugh.

 

[irlandesa]

ok, I feel better knowing I'm not the only one who feels completely incompetent. I'm fortunate enough to be on a team with a great resident and paired with a med student who is meticulous, wants to learn, and asks when he doesn't understand something instead of creating more work. I'm doing a little better now that I'm used to the Meditech system, patient worksheets used for sign-out, etc. And no pre-rounding since the night float signs out to us at 7:15 am and our students oft. like to get the vitals on their pts. and some of ours. Definitely none of the $h!++y attitude that I saw at some of the Tufts affil. hospitals, nurses and case workers here are really friendly and nice, even when I look like a complete idiot (which is most of the time). That said, I still am WAY less efficient than I'd like to be, trying to d/c people home from the 3rd floor is an absolute nightmare, attendings from some services change so often that you don't know who to page, getting paged out of attending rounds for patients that are not mine and that I'm not covering for, etc.. 2 more weeks, then I get a Derm elective month, counting the days..

 

[factoid]

Just started my transitional internship last week. I started on general medicine floors and I don't know my head from my a*&. Does anyone else feel this way? I can't seem to know enough about my patients before rounds even thopugh Iget to the freakin hospital at 6:15 to preround. This is ridiculous. I slacked in med school but was generally a strong student and am pretty efficient. However, the floors are killing me and I am lost. I forgot all my medicine and am dumbfounded when paged by the nurses. I knew it was going to be tough but never thought it would be this horrible. The only thing that keeps me going is knowing that I will never have to go through this crap after this year but don't know if I can get through one more month of floors as well as the dreaded MICU. Does anyone else feel this way? Is this normal or did I just get dumbed down beyond repair as a 4th year? Please any advice?

wow, i thought i was the only one feeling this way. I'm AOA and did pretty well on my boards, but when i started internship i felt like i had forgotten everything...i shouldn't use the past tense: i FEEL like i've forgotten everything. when i'm on call and i get a page about even the stupidest things, i have to sit and think about it and be like "ok, this guy just had a whipple, can i give him benadryl?" hehe, it's ridiculous. and i'm very timid about doing anything invasive or making a serious decision on a patient, like sending them to the ICU or something. i don't know how the hell i passed anything. did i never learn how to manage hematuria/leukocytosis/oliguria/naseauvomiting/abd distension etc etc? things have been improving as i've seen a bit more. i hadn't done surgery for two years, so i knew i would be rusty, but seeing all the other interns tear up the place makes me feel even stupider.

 

[krkuhl]

*kr raises hand and joins the group*

yup, feel like a complete idiot. at a great residency program with some realllly scarily smart people so i always feel a bit below par. I, too felt stupid and slow until the end of my first night of float--i just got too tired to care and think and just started doing orders out of reflex. wham, much faster and smarter now. i think the main problem (at least to me) is that interns have a whole new level of responsibility and that keeps us from doing what we know. we KNOW we can give benedryl and tylenol but that little voice just tells us that we are in charge and the patient's life is in our hands so we freeze. i think once i got my confidence in myself and skills back p to par, things became so much easier. i have a great upper level working with me so i dont hesitate to run anything by her BUT i dont feel the need to run EVERYTHING by her. as time goes on, you just get more confidence and more comfortable in yourself and what you can do. my only advice is to relax--you know way more than you think you do. dont let nerves and fear dictate how things go. a little fear is a good thing--makes you check things before you make a stupid error but trust in yourself and your clinical judgement--you'll be surprised how much you really DO know.