New Year, new rotation

Finally getting back in the swing of things, after the holiday season, and I'm finally back in the clinic after a month in the morgue. It was a nice break, but it's good to be back to doing medicine on 'the living' for a change.

So, I've finished two days of my family medicine rotation, still in South Bend. It's been pretty good so far. I'm in a community practice in town, and they have me primarily with one preceptor for the month. Fortunately, he seems like a pretty good guy, and I found out that he takes an annual fishing trip somewhere in Canada every year, so I'm anticipating we'll continue to get along well.

Anyway, my role is pretty much to go in and see patients before he does (as long as things are going well and we're not too far behind schedule), talk to them about why they're there, do my exam, and make a diagnosis (hopefully the right one!), and then come out of the room, talk the patient over a little, and then we go back in, and my preceptor does his part of the visit while I mostly watch.

As you might imagine, it's like a test with every patient, to see if I can figure out what's going on, what needs to be done, and why. As a rule, common things are common, and to be honest, it's not to hard to diagnose somebody with something like the flu. However, things do get more complicated, and those are the times when it's really satisfying (at least right now) to make the right diagnosis, and know what to do about it.

To sum up, so far I'm enjoying the rotation, and except for all the lake-effect snow, I'm still enjoying being back in South Bend.