Seasons of Love

You know the song: 525600 minutes...

Now that we have that earworm going in the background. I just wanted to take a moment and think about the fact that I have been a doctor officially for a year. It has been an amazing process, and I am constantly learning more about what I need to learn, but somehow, in the past 6 months, I have stopped feeling embarrassed when people call me doctor. I have learned to proudly step into the role and instead of shrinking back because I don't know something, I step forward and state that though I don't know everything, here is the information that we have and here is the plan going forward.

Somewhere, in the past 3 months, I have learned how to better deal with patients. How to tell them I need to go in the most polite terms, and how to look and them and ask questions to get a better answer and get the answer that I was looking for.

I learned to stand up to nurses, and that even the best nurse does not have the same knowledge base that a doctor does. We learn and approach patients from different standpoints, and while I constantly learn from my nurses, I also learned that sometimes it does take a physician's standpoint and critical thinking skills to say that no, this patient does not require this drug and yes, really, they do need this lab value.

Somewhere in the last month, I learned that present myself with the passion, compassion, and composure of a physician. I stopped thinking of myself as a glorified medical student and started becoming a little less scared that I would be found out as a fraud and be sent back to medical school.

Somewhere in the last 12 hours, the clocked ticked past midnight, and the Seasons passed by, to make me an official 2nd year resident, a "senior".

I have had to excuse myself out of a room to cry after I gave the patient their cancer diagnosis. I have watched as patients I performed CPR on die in front of my eyes. I have intubated patients who appeared in front of me and could not breathe. I have called patients with the good news that they were losing weight, and counseled patients as their HbA1c continued to climb despite their best efforts. I have delivered babies and put their mothers pelvis back together after delivery. I have injected patients' knees and watched as they walked out of the room pain free without a limp. I have performed OMM on patients who swear they had 10/10 chest pain, and watch their face in amazement when their pain resolved.

It has been quite a year. Here is to another great year, and to the incoming interns, good luck. You got this. You can do it.