A/I: How Lovely to be a 4th Year

Today I returned to the Pediatric A/I clinic at Ben Taub to work with Dr. A along with fellows Roshni and Madhu. Michael, a pediatric intern I'd met two weeks ago, was there, too, along with a 2nd year med student named Robert who still seemed a bit nervous about seeing patients alone (he started his rotations last month). Because my patient wouldn't arrive until later, I accompanied Robert to see his patient, a 9-year-old girl coming for a follow-up on allergic rhinitis. Her mother only spoke Spanish, and fortunately Robert knew enough medical Spanish to be able to get a history and ask questions. I sometimes had to help in asking the necessary questions. Afterwards, I told Robert to do the physical exam since it's his patient, and he looked a bit scared at the suggestion. "Umm...sure," he said, and I asked if he's examined ears before. "Yeah, on adults," he said, so I examined the girl first before letting him have a turn. I think he would have been content letting me doing the entire exam, but again, since it was HIS patient, I made him at least listen to the heart and lungs so that he'd have something to write down on the H&P.

Robert finished his patient by the time I was ready to see mine, so I invited him to come with him to see my patient. My patient was a 14-year-old guy with a 1 yr hx of exercise-induced hives; they used to be controlled by Benadryl but not any longer. He said most recently he would break out into hives just by sitting still, so he went to the ER and got some Claritin and hydroxyzine which seemed to help him a lot, since he hadn't had any hives since starting those meds. I was very glad that the medication is working for him; I've only had two hive outbreaks in the past but they made me so miserable I can't imagine living an entire YEAR with them. Afterwards, Robert had to give Dr. A an evaluation form based on his performance on just this morning (sounds similar to what we had to do at Driscoll, except I got to choose my graders and I always made sure I worked at least 3 days with them), and the poor guy looked so awkward. Roshni and I both agreed that we would not want to be in his shoes again. 4th year is SO much better than 3rd year.

Roshni, Madhu, and I were slightly late to the noon conference (free lunch), and afterwards I went to Dr. O's office so we could go over my open-book test questions together. So far I've done all right.

*The title of this post is a reference to the song "How Lovely to be a Woman" from Bye Bye Birdie*