Day 1 General Surgery

Back from vacation, time to hit the ground running -

So, started my surgery rotation today around 9:00am - I knew the doctor would not be there until around 10:30am due to a previous surgery so I reviewed the patients who were coming in that day, and then did patient interviews. After doing an interview, once the doctor got there, I would follow him into the room and he would examine the patient. The two nurses/PAs are quite nice, and there is a PA student from my school who is there with me for the next few days so they all showed me the ropes a bit - what is disposed, what is washed, etc.

At the end of the day I wrote up SOAP notes of the various patients, which includes their history, observations, the assessment, and plan for their treatment. Spent about two hours doing that, hopefully I'll go faster next time. Tomorrow we have an inguinal hernia surgery and possibly a bilateral mastectomy - there's also a cancer meeting about one of the Dr's patients but I don't know if I get to go to that.

For the rest of the evening, going to look up information about inguinal hernia surgeries, mastectomies, and other surgeries that I saw today, and get started on my reading assignments. One observation about the surgery rotation - I basically have to have as much initiative as possible, so suggest helping with things, follow the doctor into rooms - no waiting to be told what to do or asked to do this or that. Good training, requires a lot of energy though. We'll see where this goes.