FUN-DO
Wow it seems like is has been forever since I have blogged here. And it has been a while, over 6 weeks anyway. So much has happened in such a little time. Here are some tidbits.
This past January marked the beginning of the end for my school. I started 10Q. Which means that I started treating patients in the Outpatient Clinic. These are patients who are PAYING (the school, not me) to be treated by me. 10Q is suppose to be the break-in period. The time that the interns begin to figure things out with the guidance of more experienced clinicians and other interns who have been around a while. That is how it is SUPPOSE to go. But not me. Not those of us who have Dr. R for our clinician. She has lots of patients and our class is un-usually small. So we get to get tossed into the fire. So to speak. This isn't to say that we are not being supervised. We are definitely, but our time to learn the ropes is not measurable in days or weeks (like our compatriots who are working with the other clinicians). It is more like hours. Our first day was suppose to be spent following around Dr R, as she introduced us to the clinic and the told us what she expected of us. We (the four of us in her group who are in 10Q) were to find out that Dr R didn't have time for that, we were to report to her office and be prepared to see patients. We spent our first day seeing patients (observing the upper quarter interns). Our first week we had already exceeded our expected visits for the first month. It has been chaos and patients ever since.
Don't get me wrong. It isn't that we are not getting properly trained, it is that our training is taking place like we don't have any time to wait to get done. We will have our minimum requirements done well before we are half way through our internship with the school. And we are seeing more patients and a wider variety of patients than the other interns who are in our same quarter. The up side is that my confidence in treating patients is soaring. And that when I am done I will have exceeded the minimum requirements on the order of 500%. Which also bodes well for me. Past classes have desired to do the minimum then to get out and start earning a living. It isn't that I don't want to get out and work, it is that I want to get as much experience as possible before I leave.
My course load for this quarter is a bit reduced, but not much. The big challenge has been that with my clinic hours and my class schedule I have less time to myself. I have five 6 hour shifts a week in the clinic and 5 days of classes. One of my shifts is Saturday morning. Which works out to be 4 days a week that I have to be at school by 7:30 and am not done until either 5:30 or 6:30. And two half days a week; Tues when I have to be at school by 12:00 and am not done until 5:30 and Saturday when I have to be at clinic by 7:30 and am not done until 1:30. And I get about 30 min a day for lunch. Which I know is not unusual for many, but when you consider that for the past 4-5 quarters I have had anywhere from 1 to 2 hours for lunch, and that last quarter I had a 2 hour lunch every day; 30 min is a bit short.
In addition to my new work load at school, we also made a move in January. We moved into my in-laws apartment in Salem. We figured that we would be able to live in their apartment and save money the last 6-9 months of school and I would make the 60 min trek each day to school as the price. Yes I am paying lots more in gas. But not as much as we were paying in rent and utilities. The cost is in time away from home, away from my family. I have to get up and leave each day by 6 am and don't get back most days until after 8 pm. That price didn't seem as steep as it has turned out to be. We are still going through with it, but if I had to do over again, I would think about the offer a bit more than we did. It has definitely made my time at home a lot more valuable to both myself and my family.
The subject of this post is in regards to the Valentines dinner my sweetheart made for us today. We opted to spend V-day with our little family rather than to take up the offer to go out to dinner and a date together away from the kids. We love to spend time with them, and this seemed more fun to both Sue and I, than a dinner away from them. Sue made a fondue dinner, complete with the appetizers, entrees and dessert fondue. The kids loved it. The food was really good and it was more than enough, though the portions were a lot less than you would expect. It was really a lot of fun. JB said that it should be called 'fun-do' because it was so much fun.
There is so much more to say about the past 6 weeks. But that will have to for now.
This past January marked the beginning of the end for my school. I started 10Q. Which means that I started treating patients in the Outpatient Clinic. These are patients who are PAYING (the school, not me) to be treated by me. 10Q is suppose to be the break-in period. The time that the interns begin to figure things out with the guidance of more experienced clinicians and other interns who have been around a while. That is how it is SUPPOSE to go. But not me. Not those of us who have Dr. R for our clinician. She has lots of patients and our class is un-usually small. So we get to get tossed into the fire. So to speak. This isn't to say that we are not being supervised. We are definitely, but our time to learn the ropes is not measurable in days or weeks (like our compatriots who are working with the other clinicians). It is more like hours. Our first day was suppose to be spent following around Dr R, as she introduced us to the clinic and the told us what she expected of us. We (the four of us in her group who are in 10Q) were to find out that Dr R didn't have time for that, we were to report to her office and be prepared to see patients. We spent our first day seeing patients (observing the upper quarter interns). Our first week we had already exceeded our expected visits for the first month. It has been chaos and patients ever since.
Don't get me wrong. It isn't that we are not getting properly trained, it is that our training is taking place like we don't have any time to wait to get done. We will have our minimum requirements done well before we are half way through our internship with the school. And we are seeing more patients and a wider variety of patients than the other interns who are in our same quarter. The up side is that my confidence in treating patients is soaring. And that when I am done I will have exceeded the minimum requirements on the order of 500%. Which also bodes well for me. Past classes have desired to do the minimum then to get out and start earning a living. It isn't that I don't want to get out and work, it is that I want to get as much experience as possible before I leave.
My course load for this quarter is a bit reduced, but not much. The big challenge has been that with my clinic hours and my class schedule I have less time to myself. I have five 6 hour shifts a week in the clinic and 5 days of classes. One of my shifts is Saturday morning. Which works out to be 4 days a week that I have to be at school by 7:30 and am not done until either 5:30 or 6:30. And two half days a week; Tues when I have to be at school by 12:00 and am not done until 5:30 and Saturday when I have to be at clinic by 7:30 and am not done until 1:30. And I get about 30 min a day for lunch. Which I know is not unusual for many, but when you consider that for the past 4-5 quarters I have had anywhere from 1 to 2 hours for lunch, and that last quarter I had a 2 hour lunch every day; 30 min is a bit short.
In addition to my new work load at school, we also made a move in January. We moved into my in-laws apartment in Salem. We figured that we would be able to live in their apartment and save money the last 6-9 months of school and I would make the 60 min trek each day to school as the price. Yes I am paying lots more in gas. But not as much as we were paying in rent and utilities. The cost is in time away from home, away from my family. I have to get up and leave each day by 6 am and don't get back most days until after 8 pm. That price didn't seem as steep as it has turned out to be. We are still going through with it, but if I had to do over again, I would think about the offer a bit more than we did. It has definitely made my time at home a lot more valuable to both myself and my family.
The subject of this post is in regards to the Valentines dinner my sweetheart made for us today. We opted to spend V-day with our little family rather than to take up the offer to go out to dinner and a date together away from the kids. We love to spend time with them, and this seemed more fun to both Sue and I, than a dinner away from them. Sue made a fondue dinner, complete with the appetizers, entrees and dessert fondue. The kids loved it. The food was really good and it was more than enough, though the portions were a lot less than you would expect. It was really a lot of fun. JB said that it should be called 'fun-do' because it was so much fun.
There is so much more to say about the past 6 weeks. But that will have to for now.