Night after day after night...

Residency day 57.

Well actually night 2, as I am officially on nights. We have kind of an odd system when on wards where you work every other night for two weeks. Saturday was my first "night" and it was rough because I haven't had to stay awake for 30 hours straight in a very long time. I was falling asleep while writing up my H&Ps and that was an awful feeling. I will be prepared tonight with gum, candy and an extra cup of coffee for 3am. The every other night off is kind of odd. 16 hours on. 30 hours off. In theory that sounds nice but it hard to get on a schedule. I had planned to simply sleep all day and then use my off night to read, do things around the house, etc but I guess that residency caught up with me because I simply slept for 18 out of the last 24 hours. Ooops. Now I have all day "off" before I got to work tonight and it is not the weekend and so Dr Boyfriend is at work and I have the house to myself. So what to do...  Finally, I can read! I am so behind in everything, it will be nice to read about medicine and not medicine. I need to go join the Houston Public Library. And grocery shop and bake and lounge and do laundry. And exercise. And finish my graduation thank you notes. Yes, residency  has kept me busy. My to do list is long. So I'm thankful for the time right now to catch up.

Otherwise I really don't have much to say. Inpatient wards is busy, good, horrible, awful, scary and/or fun depending upon the moment in time. I hated my first week and rather enjoyed my second week. I like the patient care aspect of it and struggled with the documentation aspect. There is never time to write good thorough notes and yet I know that notes are super important and without good documentation it is difficult to practice good medicine. And yet I struggled with this daily.  I can only hope I get more efficient as time goes on. I am trying to dictate but that has pitfalls too. Being an intern is about doing paperwork, calling the consults, updating the lists and admitting/discharging patients. I ended up staying  late to talk to parents, answer questions, etc because there really just isn't time during the day for that aspect and it is the education part of doctoring that I so love.

Time to work on my to do list, and maybe walk my dog. Happy Monday to you!