Lost in the Job

I've been thinking a lot recently about my transition from medical student to intern.  Seven months into the year, I have been looking back at how my attitude towards patient care has shifted.  As a student, we were all taught to know everything about our patients.  We were encouraged to spend time talking to our patients and their families.  I really enjoyed that part of my "job" as the medical student.  I'm not the world's greatest people person, but I do enjoy meeting new people, talking to them, listening to and learning from their stories.

As an intern on a busy surgical service, spending a lot of time with our patients is impossible.  On the busiest of days, seeing patients at all can be a struggle.  Patients look forward to the time when their doctor(s) visit.  They have questions and concerns that they want to address, and they are looking for someone to take some time to explain recent findings and update them on the plan.  On top of that, they are "locked up" in an unfamiliar place where bells, whistles and announcements are played all day and night long, people come into their rooms at weird hours to wake them up and ask a million questions and their privacy and dignity are sometimes taken for granted.

Although I don't have an hour to spend with each of the 20 patients on my service every day, I do have a couple of minutes to make some social rounds in the afternoons, to say hello to my patients and make sure their questions are answered and their needs are being addressed.  It's not like I don't want to talk to my patients, but more as if I get lost in the workload of being the intern, answering pages and checking and double checking to make sure that everything is being done.