sub-intern

It is Day 3 of my sub-internship: the month where fourth-year medical students pretend to be - ahem, act like - first-year interns, known to the rest of the world as MD's.

I talked to families.  One of my patient's son's called me Doctor.  The nurses call me Doc.  I don't know what is going on.  I live and die by my scrawled on sheet of paper with patient's names and the corresponding to-do's.  I love my medical student, who saves the day with her errand-running and note-writing.  My resident heroically carries 20 patients with the help of a rotating cast of subbed-in interns (for his intern who is sick) and the bumbling idiot that is me, the sub-intern - and still manages to send us home early and do every item on the to-do list.  He even gave me a multi-colored pen to organize myself.

Being an internal medicine resident is something like my personal nightmare: an endless series of to-do lists and interruptions, occasionally with a real emergency, coupled with sleep deprivation.  My ADD tendencies have gone into overdrive.  I fell asleep during both the noon lecture and our consult with an oncologist today.  I have started a caffeine addiction.

I only am carrying 4 patients and I cannot keep them straight.  I keep mixing them up and reading the wrong charts.  It takes me 10 minutes to figure out how to enter an order.

I put in my first order on Monday for intravenous fluids and nutrition.  I cannot yet prescribe drugs without approval.

I am wearing the long coat - I am acting as a physician, and I am terrified of how little I know and how quickly people will figure out I have no idea what is going on.  When I pick up the phone to call consults, I just open my mouth and hope something somewhat intelligible comes out.  Sometimes it does.

It's coming together, though.