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Week 7: The beat goes on

July 19th, 2013 etcare14

Hey all, hope you’re all keeping cool in this brutal Northeast heat wave. Luckily for me the hospital and its OR’s are kept pretty cool.

I spent Tuesday of this week in the OR with my physician, watching him perform a few different surgeries. It is nice at this point to have spent enough time observing him to have a clear idea of what each movement is for and what he is doing throughout the procedure. Having a solid understanding makes the whole process much more interesting and engaging for me. I also learned a decent amount about anesthesia and how that plays into the overall surgical theater. It was very interesting to hear that side of things, and did not put me to sleep (sorry, I had to). I am definitely thinking more about anesthesia as an interesting career in medicine.

On Wednesday I spent the day in the OR with a cardiac surgeon. Observing heart surgery was honestly one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. It was incredible to watch a beating heart pretty close in person, as it is the most fundamental and important organ, rivaled only by the brain. I have learned about the heart and its function in a number of my biology classes, both in high school and at Holy Cross, and have done plenty of dissections, all mimicking the human version, the real thing. Therefore, because of this academic experience and just how central the organ is to human life, seeing a human heart beating person was an almost surreal experience. This was a long day for me, being in the OR from 7:30 am to 4:30pm, but it was well worth it- definitely one of the cooler experiences I have seen this summer.

I spent Thursday this week with a primary care doctor who both runs the hospital’s clinic and serves in the hospital as a general internist. He was also a Holy Cross graduate, which I did not know when I set up the day of shadowing. This was a fun, unexpected connection that helped us to get along well. This was also an interesting, full circle experience for me, since I did a thesis this spring on the importance of primary care doctors. It was an interesting morning and I really liked the wide range of conditions he treats.

In the afternoon it was another intern and mine’s turn to host our weekly seminar. We talked about what the new health care law might mean for us as aspiring clinicians. I admit it can be a little dry, but I think it is really important to know what this might mean for us and our future careers.

Last night a few of the other interns and I went out for fireworks on the Connecticut River in Hartford. The show was delayed from its original date a few weeks ago, but it did not disappoint last night. We watched from a lawn outside an office building down by the river, but our viewing experience was complicated by the lawn sprinklers that may or may not have been coincidentally going off. Nevertheless, we had fun and got ice cream after, topping of a successful night.

Keep you posted for weekend plans.

ETC

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