Quick post: on call, last day tomorrow.

Today was my last official full day here at EOMA and St. Elizabeth Hospital. Dr. Schott and I have been on call since last Friday. It's been a busy few days but SO educational! This rotation has truly been a blend of family medicine, internal medicine, emergency medicine, OB, and more. What's cool is that rural family medicine encompasses all of these areas. These last couple of days have been "internal medicine" heavy since we've spent the majority of our time admitting and following patients at the medical-surgical unit. Goodbye comfort zone, hello steep learning curve. :) While intimidating at first, this "internal-esque" business is gradually getting more comfortable, rather I'm feeling more comfortable with it. Dr. Schott has been giving me tons of realtime feedback, which has been incredibly helpful. He also gives me the opportunity to do TONS, so I feel like I learn so much just from the variety and spectrum of experiences. I hadn't yet really written orders or felt confident in doing so. Especially in this last week, he's helped me arrive at a place when I am essentially the patient's doctor, and Dr. Schott is my supervisor and co-signer, but he lets me take charge of my patients. It's exciting, exhileration, empowering, intimidating, fun, challenging...all of the above. I'm getting more comfortable with writing orders and being confident about my clinical decisions. He and the other doctors have been super helpful and have encouraged me to trust what I know and just take a stab at diagnoses, treatments, and other decisions related to patient care. Thank you all for being such awesome teachers! Tomorrow, I will round on my patients in the morning and then see some of my patients in the afternoon at EOMA clinic. I'll also watch my first thoracentesis. I have to dictate a discharge summary, and gosh knows that being speedy at dictations is not one of my strengths...so gotta go! :)