Residency Fair

Today was superb, for many reasons.

It was my last day on the short stay unit at the pediatrics hospital. This is bitter sweet because I have enjoyed this part of the rotation very much and feel like it has been very educational, however I am looking forward to moving on and getting to experience something new. I feel like as a third year medical student this is both your blessing and curse. You never really have enough time to settle in anywhere - as soon as you feel comfortable you are being shuffled off to something new. But by the same token you never really can be bored. You also have the opportunity to work with a variety of people in various locations so you may find something you love but you might also find things you hate. You never know what is around the next corner.

It was my attending's birthday (something we didn't know going into the day) but it was sweet to see all the nursing staff and one of the other students give him gifts and sing to him. You can tell a lot about a person by the way that people around them react. And this man is an excellent physician, teacher and colleague.

One of the nurse managers caught me in the morning when I was alone and started to discuss a subject that she is passionate about: patient (parent in the case of pediatrics) education. She normally gives a presentation and was planning to with us but because it is our last day and we have a modified schedule she wasn't going to have the time. Therefore, we got the abbreviated version this morning before the attending showed up. She had a lot of good information about the statistics on return to the emergency room for problems related to discharge instructions, ways to determine the best way to present information to different groups of people, and strategies for overcoming significant barriers (i.e. language, parents who can't read, etc.)

We had to leave the hospital early (about 11:30) since our school was hosting a dean's lunch and residency fair that we were all interested in attending. This is the first residency fair they have hosted since we were first years. It is the first one I have attended period. The dean's lunch was not super informative or interesting. The residency fair was a great opportunity to talk to residents and program staff from various programs (mostly primary care in Texas), though. All three of my top choice programs were there. I attempted to walk through with a couple of friends, but our differing interest levels in various programs soon separated us (which was probably for the best as I think we all got more out of it this way). I relished the opportunity to have in depth discussions with the residents at all the programs. The information presented contributed significantly to changing my opinion and rank order of the programs I had been seriously considering and there was at least one surprising strong contender. I am becoming more and more excited about this planning of my future.

Afterwards, a friend and I decided to go out to dinner. So I called Bryan and had him meet us at Joe T. Garcia's. It is a really old and awesome Mexican restaurant that I was introduced to on my surgery rotation. (Thank you awesome chief!) It has a great atmosphere and authentic Mexican food, but a very limited menu. Since it is unfortunately cash only my friend ended up paying for dinner (we left a tip and sent her home with our sizable leftovers for her son) - thank you! Afterwards we walked around a bit, with the intent to explore the stockyards like she wanted to, but we found that we were all quite tired from the day's events, so we called it a night after wandering through one pawn shop.