Lessons

"There is a lesson in almost everything that you do, and getting the lesson is how you move forward. It is how you enrich your spirit."

Being an intern in the pediatric ward means that the bulk of the work is euphemistically termed 'clinical assessement.'  Clinical assessment being a nicer term for the term 'monitoring,' the dirty job that clerks and interns perform as (hopefully) part of the learning experience and perform due to necessity because of the sheer bulk of patients outnumber the nursing staff.  We actually get it easier nowadays, that monitoring of the more stable patients is delegated to the nursing staff and we only monitor the more critical cases.  Compared to internal medicine, where patients can be more cooperative and more stable, pediatrics entails meticulous monitoring of vital signs of patients who are actively resisting all efforts to be held or are so unstable that even close monitoring doesn't do the trick.  I guess the clinical assessment part is one of the reasons that I collapse and stay in a coma after a duty in the ward, missing out on family gatherings and other events.

Okay, this picture was taken prior to Peds, but I'm wearing my 'frogs' suit more often and I look like this 99% of the time

Looking back, there is some gain on my part due to the clinical assessment part of duties in the ward.  Never mind the disparity between the effort and the reward.  There is now some semblance of confidence with my pediatric clinical eye, knowing when a patient is or is not getting better.  I get to call and participate in code blues.  I get to interact with parents (nice calm pro-active ones or rude histrionic indifferent ones) and still reassure them that no, 37.6 does not mean that their kiddo is going to go into seizures anytime soon.  I learn how to stretch my patience further when it's thinner than a fragile sheet of dumpling wrapper.  I get to teach parents how to take better care of their little ones.  I guess those are the lessons for this trying two weeks of my life.  The lessons aren't as fun as the ones I had before, but I hope those lessons are helping me become a better physician.