I would really, really like to read your original comment.
ask, and ye shall receive!!
I held anywhere from 3-5 patients at a time. The senior resident would see them after I had already seen them and pended orders in EPIC so that I was forced to commit to a plan before I spoke with anyone about the patient. I did all the H&Ps, SOAP notes, and discharge summaries (the senior resident would just copy my note so that it was billable). I held a sub-I pager, so nurses would page me with questions about my patients. Only worked days, but hit about 70-80 hours per week.
You were very lucky.
My subI, hell even my whole 3rd year, was total and utter crap.
Mine didn't prepare me AT ALL.*
I would say this person as a med student having a chance to pend orders and come up with a plan in a vacuum is very valuable experience - this is what you will often have to do intern year.
Trying to come up with your own problem list at minimum and taking a stab at a plan (not just copying from a resident's note) is the most important thing you can do as a student to prepare. That and getting really efficient with prerounding, notes, presentations, organization.
I would say the above experience from the poster is what you want your subI to be like. It is like what your intern year will be like, except you can have up to 10 patients by yourself as your hard cap in IM.
Some IM programs the intern doesn't get stuck with 7 ICU or 10 wards patients at a time day 1. If you have a subI like this person's, and you end up at a program like this, your workload would be more than twice what it was in the subI.
It is more than twice the amount of work compared to your this ideal subI, because you will have more patient care & residency related admin duties on top of this that a medical student doesn't have. For example, continuity clinic and all the associated work with that (Rx requests, reviewing lab results, calls, etc)
*will not reveal medical school or program so don't ask
check out my intern megapost for intern tips
(some will be useful for a subI)
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/things-to-do-to-shine-in-pgy-1.1188633/#post-17640862
Mastering some of the organizational tips I give will help you very much come intern year.
I assert this as everything I wrote comes from personal experience intern year. From someone who had a poor foundation from an organizatonal and practical skills standpoint (fund of knowledge was fine), and had to hash it all out on the job, as the slowest little intern that couldn't. It is all the stuff I wish I had known to start.
But, you can never develop the skills I talk about if your subI doesn't look like the person I quoted's. That is your goal.