Today’s inane image of the day:
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| The Heart & Vascular Services at Beaumont Royal Oak have been headquarters for my summer cardiology experience [“internship”]. I can actually find my way around at least a small part of the hospital now! |
Nine of us elected to do a Cardiology “internship” [I’m hesitant to call it a true internship as most of what we’re doing is like “advanced shadowing” since it’s definitely more hands-on than shadowing prior to medical school and everything makes so much more sense, however, we still aren’t doing as much as if we were doing a clinical clerkship] [more appropriately, it is a summer Cardiology experience] – and I hope I’m speaking for my group when I say that it has been tons of fun. As with most things, there are definitely high points and mundane points, but overall I am extremely happy that I elected to spend six weeks hanging out with the Cardiologists/Cardiac Surgeons.
Our particular program is setup such that our weekly schedule mimics a Cardiology fellow’s monthly schedule – basically, each week we rotate through a different service [e.g. inpatient, SICU, Cath lab, etc]. We are expected to attend noon conferences [and there’s really no reason for us to skip this – they provide lunch everyday] and Cath conferences [early morning on Tuesdays]. Additionally, each of us spends at least one half-day in clinic following our mentor [each of us were assigned an attending]. Finally, we are also assigned a fellow to follow around each week [the only exception is the SICU/surgical week] – from my experience so far, the fellow generally dictates our schedule outside of the “required” activities.
My first week was spent in “non-invasive reading” which basically translates into performing and interpreting echocardiograms. Imaging is definitely one of my interests so I was pretty excited to start off with this service. The fellow I was assigned to had worked with our TBL group during clinical case studies so I was already somewhat acquainted with him.
The schedule for the week was pretty much performing ultrasounds in the morning [both transesophageal and transthoracic], noon conference, then reading/interpreting the images in the afternoon. Although this may seem somewhat slow-paced… I thought it was an extremely appropriate way to start off, plus I was able to get some experience doing the transthoracic ultrasounds [not that we saved any of the images I got, but hey, I could totally do a mean four-chamber apical view!]. Plus, I’m a big fan of dark rooms with images [this is, of course, assuming I have coffee] [this does not mean I’m going to become a radiologist].
I thought that the best part of my first week was probably picking the brains of the fellows – it’s great to hear their experience going through medical school, residency then finally this fellowship [two of them actually took a year to be a hospitalist prior to starting their Cardiology fellowships – I didn’t realize that this was so common]. Their advice was priceless and they were just a lot of fun to hang out with.
Anyway, I have to get up early to make it to Cath conference – I hope you’re enjoying your summer [I know I’m loving the sunny days!].
