DisisD: physician moms blog hop vol 2

9.02.2015

physician moms blog hop vol 2

Christy of SunnyWithASideOf and I thank you all for stopping by and linking up with us.

This month's prompt is: A DAY IN THE LIFE

I started a series for a day in the life during my clinical rotations as a med student. I have decided to record them as a I started mentoring this school year.

For this link up, I will give you a little preview of a day in the life of a child neurologist. i bet it's not too different to a day in the life of a general practitioner or internist if you are in clinic.

8a: I arrive at the office. I start later than most folks. Some decide to start their clinic at 7a or 7:30a. For my specialty, it's tough to ask parents of special needs children to get out of the house and bring all their gear and wheelchair to make it a a 7a appt. It's like asking a new mom to bring her newborn for a bili check at 8a. ( I also have to drop off my children to school, hence the later than some docs start time).

As soon as I get at the office, I continue sipping my coffee or eating my breakfast and turn on the computer. I log on the electronic medical record and check phone messages in my inbox and answer them. I call patients around this time too. I also check results of blood draws and MRIs or CTs around this time.

8:30a : The way I set up my clinic, I start at 8:30a. so basically from 8:30a-noon, I see patients in new patient blocks and return patient blocks. The patients get roomed in. Their vitals are taken. Then I see them.

8:30a-noon: depending on the flow, I dictate my notes right after the visit. if I am running behind and the patients to see are waiting, I usually just go to one room to the next and just dictate during lunch or after clinic. I try not to dictate at the very end as much as I can. The worst thing is finishing clinic and then realizing you have to dictate 8-12 notes :(

After seeing patients, I also write orders and prescription before they check out. I do this before going to the next patient 95% of the time. Because if I wait till the end of the day, I will forget something for sure!

noon-1p: lunch break. It's not really a true break. It's a working break. I eat lunch and check my inbox again. i call patients. I review MRIs. I check labs.

If we have noon conference, I attend this learning time and get continuing medical education points.

1p-5p: this is my afternoon clinic. It's repeat of what I did in the morning.
I have general child neurology clinics and also specialty clinics. I see children with seizures, headaches, movement disorders such as tics, cerebral palsy, spasticity, muscle problems, developmental delay and more.

5p and later: I do my best not to leave a lot of things at the very end. Again, the worst thing is having to do MORE work at the end of the clinic. We never really clock out as the last patient is checked out. There are still a lot of things that need to be done. Again, I check my inbox before I log out. Sometimes, I have to call consults, call colleagues from different specialty if I have a concern about my patient.

If I am not on-call that day, I get to go home after all my work is done.

If I am on-call, I still get to go home BUT I will be paged by the ER docs and other physicians if they have questions. Calls are different per group. Ours start at 4p and end at 8a.

A day in the Clinic is different than a day in the wards. Maybe one day, I will write something about that. In the meantime, browse through my a day in the life series for med student rotations if you are a student doctor. I hope it helps you.

if you are a momma-surgeon or sports-med-mama or OBGYN-mama or peds-mama, etc , please share what you do at the OR, clinic etc. We would like to see a glimpse of your day. No need to be specific and no patient info please... we want to respect their privacy.

The dates and prompts of our future linkups are:

October 7 - What you wish you'd known before entering medical school...
November 4 - birth stories! Link them all up!
December 2 -Tips on how you handle work or call during the holidays. How do your child(ren) handle you being away?

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