Slow | Doctors at Play

I'm starting my third year with internal medicine, which will consist of one month of ambulatory (or outpatient), followed by one month of inpatient service at Wishard. Ambulatory is supposed to be relatively laid back, and we get to see a wide spectrum of patients. The past couple of days were orientation. Even though I've worked on various orientation programs in the past, I still share the universal feeling of dread that comes with going through orientation, like the inevitable scheduling downtime where you're bored as out of your mind and all those people lecturing to you and filling your head with important information that you won't remember.

Today was my first day of seeing patients as a third year. Sweet! I learned that I suck pretty bad at writing doctors notes and exploring differential diagnoses with a patient on the fly. I interviewed a patient with another student, and then we had our preceptor come in to interview the same patient. Needless to say, the real doctor's history-taking skills were far superior to ours. We still couldn't be sure what was causing the patient's symptoms, though. I wonder what it would be like to have Dr. House as your preceptor. I'd probably fail my clerkship.