4th Year medicine: Clerkship

Welcome to the longest 2 months of my medschool journey.

Although our clerkship (junior internship) year was a lot different than the older generation due to the restrictions of the pandemic, it still felt pretty tiring (as how it's supposed be). 

Before the pandemic, clerks or junior interns go on a pre-duty-from schedule.
Pre duty (7am-5pm)

Duty (7am-7am of the next day)
From (7am-5pm ~ zombie mode) ...and the cycle repeats

But during our time, we were decked on 12 hour duties except in one rotation (surgery).

Our duty everyday was 7am-7pm for a week, then 24 hours off every 8 days to shift to night schedule which was 7pm-7am.
During our surgery rotation, we went on 24-hour duty. 7am-7am the next day, or 7pm-7pm the next day, with 24 hours off in between.

Since our face to face duty was squeezed into 2 months, we only get to rotate (for 2 weeks each) in Pediatrics, Internal Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology, with 1 day in Radiology, and 1 day in Anesthesiology. All the rest of the 8 months was online clerkship.

🍼Pedia rotation. During our time, there almost no admissions in the wards for pediatric patients mainly because there wasn't any COVID vaccine available for this population. So on our part, it was a chill rotation. We were also assigned to different areas like the neonatal intensive care unit, and delivery room where we get the chance to assist in catching a newborn. 
Personally, I really enjoyed this rotation since I worked as a NICU nurse prior going to medschool. It was a lot of throwback down the memory lane. And by default, I loved baby burritos. But pediatrics is still a rule out for residency. Hahaha.

💊Internal Medicine rotation. This ranks as the Top 2 in my list of most tiring rotations. It was errands here and there on top of numerous paperworks. In addition, monitoring 10-12 patients with admissions on the side. I only came home to sleep and do the same cycle the next day. 

🔪Surgery rotation. Of course surgery was Top 1 of the list, but also the most fun for me. If you've been reading my blogs since 2013, one of the reasons I went to medschool is to fulfill my dream of becoming a surgeon one day. Nothing worth having comes easy, as what people say. It was tiring due to the every hour monitoring post operatively, and the 24-hour duty we have to render. Sleep who? But every time I get to scrub in the OR, I really do lose track of time. Maybe because it was my happy place, and I enjoy watching different surgeries as well.

🤰🏻Obstetrics and Gynecology. For our grand finale, we have the OB department. The most memorable thing we did during this rotation was labor watch. We literally place our hands on the mother's fundus (tummy) and count the interval and duration of each contraction. Labor, especially in first time mothers, could take up to 17 hours or 1 whole duty day.

But overall, the experience was filled with learnings that would guide us in our medical career. This would set as our foundation on how we would treat and handle our future patients. I am truly thankful that UERM became my training ground and my alma mater. The consultants, residents, and faculty, had different teaching styles but only one goal, to mold us to be the 5 star physician we need to be.

🎥VLOG

xx,

Kea Ortega