I'm post call right now. . .should get some sleep maybe 5 hrs. . .

A month as a Doctor
The joy of being a med-student is that you're there at the hospital to learn. When you're an intern you have the double duty to learn and work. What's the difference between a fourth year med-student and an intern? One month. It's been an exciting, exhausting and frustating month. I've been lucky getting a least one day off a week. One week I worked 9 days straight without one. I keep telling myself it could be worse. . .No matter where one does their internship it's still hard work. The little things help like a quasi-electronic data base so I don't have to do a chart dissection, emailing consults, and nurses who actually take verbal orders over the phone. I trained at a county hospital and now I'm spoiled. The one thing that doesn't change much between an HMO and a county facility is the patients. We still see enuf bread and butter medicine; maybe not as much as the crazy pathology of a county hospital but the patients are still scared, their families demanding, and the majority of the work the intern's. Next week I start the chaos of the E.R. where ppl use it for primary care, drug seekers come to try and get a quick fix, and I get 2.5 days off a week!