REALLY scared of internship...

[CaptKirk]

---

Members don't see this ad.

Okay, so I'm fishing for encouragement. I'm really worried about how I'll perform as an intern. As a med student, I hated writing notes, H&P's, basically anything that involved ward work. Hence one reason I am going into Rads (among many). Anyway, I'm pretty scared about getting through internship. Just wondering if anyone can offer some personal experience about it... how it went, was it as bad as you thought, survivable even if you suck at wards, etc.

 

[orientedtoself]

everybody is scared before starting residency. you have newfound responsibility to be someone's doctor. you could write somebody for 1000x too much of some medicine and kill them. thankfully, there are checks. pharmacy checks your orders. you will have a senior resident who will be around and can answer questions. ask lots of questions early on in the year. even stupid questions. if you are concerned about a patient who just doesn't look good, call your senior. when you have a bad feeling about a patient, usually something is wrong with them.

ok, so you don't like clinical medicine. try to really take advantage of your time off and recharge. work out. go fishing/hiking/skiing/climbing/ whatever it is you like to do. and intern year is only 12 months. you will make it!

 

[dynx]

Okay, so I'm fishing for encouragement. I'm really worried about how I'll perform as an intern. As a med student, I hated writing notes, H&P's, basically anything that involved ward work. Hence one reason I am going into Rads (among many). Anyway, I'm pretty scared about getting through internship. Just wondering if anyone can offer some personal experience about it... how it went, was it as bad as you thought, survivable even if you suck at wards, etc.

You're in luck. I know a thing or two about radiology prelims since we have a couple in my program.
The first thing to know is that you can relax. You'll have a great and easy intern year! In fact, you sucking won't be a problem for you at all! It will however make life for everyone around you hell. They, as hard workers that didn't go into a lifestyle specialty, will feel compelled to pick-up the slack you leave and step in to stop you from making mistakes. You'll naturally float through your year assured that since you matched into something like rads you could certainly be a good intern if you wanted, you just choose not to waste the energy. You'll do just enough to avoid loosing your spot and coast through the year into your cush 9-5 job. Enjoy. If you're a surgical prelim you may however risk being killed by a real intern in a fit of rage as you whine about how hard your year is anyway.

 

[orientedtoself]

way to be supportive dynx 🙄

some of the smartest interns i have met have been transitional years going into radiology or derm. they know all sorts of esoteric book knowledge. stuff i don't know about or have forgotten since med school, like the difference between direct and indirect coombs tests. which, incidentally, i have forgotten again.

 

[Rogue_Leader]

I panicked a little bit last fall about what I would be getting into this summer. I did my med sub-I followed by a month in the ICU and on my last day of ICU I was going home feeling "Man, that was a tough 2 months, but now it's over and I can take it easy doing my step II studying and interviews and such". This was then followed by panic when I realized "Holy crap, I can't be tired, at this point next year, it would be a ward month, followed by ICU, and tomorrow, I'd be back on the wards, I'm going to die". I'm pretty sure my intern year is going to come to an abrupt end 3 months into intern year when I fall asleep behind the wheel post call and crash into a fuel truck. I'm not certain whether this isn't the worst way to end intern year.

 

[Samoa]

way to be supportive dynx 🙄

some of the smartest interns i have met have been transitional years going into radiology or derm. they know all sorts of esoteric book knowledge. stuff i don't know about or have forgotten since med school, like the difference between direct and indirect coombs tests. which, incidentally, i have forgotten again.

Yeah, but you're talking about medicine oriented prelim years. Dynx is talking about a surgery prelim year, which is a whole different animal.

On medicine, you tend to have "your" patients within the service, and your senior takes up the slack if you don't do your job well.

On a surgery service it's the tasks that are divided, rather than the care of particular patients. If somebody is a slacker and doesn't do their job, those tasks are still the responsibility of the interns as a group. So they get shunted to a fellow intern, rather than a senior (who is in the OR, couldn't take care of it even if were his/her job).

 

[oompaloompa]

I was a bit worried too when I started, but looking back it isn't the things I was initially concerned about that ended up giving me the biggest headaches. Remember, true emergencies in the hospital are actually quite rare, and looking back over the past year, I can think of few times I was called on to make an independent decision on something of real consequence. As I've said before, intern year is mostly about endurance and systems management. A hard worker with basic common sense should do just fine.

As for me, the only part I've truly hated this year is that the full brunt of medical bureaucracy seems to fall on the intern. You'll find the most time-consuming part of your day(writing notes) is mostly for billing purposes. Everyday there's another damn form to be filled out for no other reason than "it's policy" or "some JCAHO cubicle-dweller wants you to." And dictations, the bane of my existance.

Don't get me wrong, there's good parts too. You'll notice that I have no complaints about the actual "doctor" part of my job. I really enjoy seeing patients and using critical thinking to come up a plan. Since I'm in peds, most of my patients are really pretty likable(even if their parents aren't), and most of them get better. I get to learn how to be a doctor in a more-or-less safe environment, there's always back up. And if something serious actually goes down, as long as you do the ABC's and escalate quickly, there's really nothing else that can be expected of you.

So I think you can relax. Probably the worst that can happen is that you'll turn into a tired and jaded intern next spring too. Good luck

 

[buckley]

As somebody not familiar with the US system, *WHAT ARE DICTATIONS?* (I'm asking it here now.) I'm guessing that it may be some form of transcribing, but I want to get the real thing.

 

[Winged Scapula]

As somebody not familiar with the US system, *WHAT ARE DICTATIONS?* (I'm asking it here now.) I'm guessing that it may be some form of transcribing, but I want to get the real thing.

A dictation is a verbal report of an event - admission, discharge, operative report, etc. which is then transcribed (typed up) and placed in the patient's chart.

As a resident you will usually dictate discharges but not admissions (because most transcription takes at least 24 hrs and most admits require a written H&P on the chart), any procedures you do (unless its quicker to write them in the chart). You will be given a code and instructions on how to dictate. It is much faster (usually) than writing it out, once you get the flow down.

 

[CaptKirk]

You're in luck. I know a thing or two about radiology prelims since we have a couple in my program.
The first thing to know is that you can relax. You'll have a great and easy intern year! In fact, you sucking won't be a problem for you at all! It will however make life for everyone around you hell. They, as hard workers that didn't go into a lifestyle specialty, will feel compelled to pick-up the slack you leave and step in to stop you from making mistakes. You'll naturally float through your year assured that since you matched into something like rads you could certainly be a good intern if you wanted, you just choose not to waste the energy. You'll do just enough to avoid loosing your spot and coast through the year into your cush 9-5 job. Enjoy. If you're a surgical prelim you may however risk being killed by a real intern in a fit of rage as you whine about how hard your year is anyway.

Dude... who killed your cat??? Okay, so where do you get off assuming that 1. I am not a hardworker and 2. that I have no interest in helping my team??? Bitter much?? Sure as heck sounds like it. I was just trying to reach out to people that are a little panicked about internship dude. In no way did I say anything about slacking off or not working hard; point in fact I intend to work my *** off starting in July. I was just looking for a teansy bit of support and encouragement. Bitter as you are it's no wonder you radiology prelims don't want to lift a finger to help you out. I wouldn't offer you a glass of water if you were drowning. Jerk.

 

[IndyXRT]

I did prelim medicine and emerged mostly unscathed. It's hard work. I think you'll find, however, that once you take ownership of the patients, it's not nearly as bad doing the paperwork (although it's still tedious). It's quite a change from medical school, when your H&P is essentially an exercise in learning and accomplishes nothing (in general, at least at my medical school).

 

[buckley]

Thanks for the explanation Winged! whew, I actually thought we would be the ones doing the transcribing...
It is a pain getting those organized though. My first ones would probably be all over the place.

 

[Raidergate]

Dude... who killed your cat??? Okay, so where do you get off assuming that 1. I am not a hardworker and 2. that I have no interest in helping my team??? Bitter much?? Sure as heck sounds like it. I was just trying to reach out to people that are a little panicked about internship dude. In no way did I say anything about slacking off or not working hard; point in fact I intend to work my *** off starting in July. I was just looking for a teansy bit of support and encouragement. Bitter as you are it's no wonder you radiology prelims don't want to lift a finger to help you out. I wouldn't offer you a glass of water if you were drowning. Jerk.

As a med student, I hated writing notes, H&P's, basically anything that involved ward work.

Those things are internish things to be doing. I know they suck, but I'm guessing that's where he got his assumption.

Don't worry, though, they usually hate the off-service FP rotating interns more.

 

[San_Juan_Sun]

I wouldn't offer you a glass of water if you were drowning. Jerk.

This would be very helpful. Just the sort of thing a prelim would do. (just kidding) 🙂