My First Rotation

On Tuesday, I had my first rotation. And if you haven't been keeping up with my blog…NO I am not in my Clinical Rotations yet! Our school just calls it a rotation the first time you go spend a day at the hospital. I was picked up around 8 AM with about 20 other classmates and driven to Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH for short) in Roseau, which took about an hour. First off, I must say that the drive to PMH is a lot easier on the stomach in comparison to the one to the airport. The drive to Roseau is actually quite beautiful because it follows the coast pretty much the whole, plus there are long stretches of straight roads, which is always a plus here. Once we got there, we were shuffled into a meeting room where we were all assigned to a doctor and specialty (Ob/Gyn, Surgery, Pediatrics, ENT, etc.). Much to my surprise I was assigned to follow a doctor in Geriatrics. Much to my surprise again, my day would not be spent at the hospital, but instead at the Dominica Infirmary. So I, along with a couple of other students, were piled back into a van and driven to the Infirmary, which was 5 minutes away. Once we got there, we were kind of shocked just to the see the facilities. I guess it was nothing like I had expected. It was basically a square-shaped building with a large courtyard in the middle and 4 different Wards that made up the sides of the square. I estimated that it probably had approximately 200 residents. Once we took in the scenery, we met up with our assigned doctor and promptly saw our first patient.

Since this was our first time doing something like this, I didn't know what to expect. But I found out quickly. The doctor gave us a brief rundown on the patient's medical history and then we began a discussion. For example, the patient had hypertension. The doctor looked at me and said, "Tell me everything you know about hypertension." Gulp! That's the sound of me taking a huge swallow after being put on the spot like that. So I told her everything that I knew at that moment pertaining to hypertension. After rattling off tons of stuff about it, we moved on to its clinical signs, followed by it's treatment. Then we examined the patient's signs for hypertension like taking their blood pressure and so forth. That's how things went. We brought up one of the patient's problems, talked about every aspect of that problem and then examined the patient for that problem. This carried on to about 12 o'clock noon, when we were dismissed for lunch.

I and my colleagues got into the van and immediately told the driver to drive us to PIZZA HUT!!! Yes, there is a Pizza Hut on the island and it's located in downtown Roseau. For three semesters now, I have seen 4th Semesters coming back from their rotations in Roseau carrying boxes of pizza for themselves and their friends. This time, it was my turn! Except, I only got a 10" personal pizza for myself and ate it in about 10 minutes. It was fun and delicious while it lasted! Subway and Pizza Hut….that's all we have for American food here. Since we were allotted 2 hours for lunch and it only took like 30 minutes to eat lunch, we walked around Roseau for a little bit and enjoyed the view of a huge cruise ship (AIDA, a German cruise) in the bay. Then we returned to the Infirmary.

Our afternoon session ran a little differently than the morning. Instead of working so closely with the doctor like in the morning (which was more of a learning/quiz session), the afternoon was meant to complete a full history and physical exam on a new patient on our own. By the time that was over with, it was 4 o'clock….time to leave and meet up with the other students at PMH to drive home. The whole day lasted from 8 AM to 5:15 PM. I only saw two patients. By any doctor's standards, I don't think that would be classified as being very efficient. And yet I was completely exhausted. I slept well that night.