I was introduced to patient care during junior year of high school when I volunteered at my local hospital. I worked on a med/surg unit every Monday evening checking-in on patients and answering call lights. My experience helped me learn to communicate with patients which set me up well for medical school. When I got to medical school, I was placed in a General Surgery Clinic at OSU East for longitudinal practice. I was excited to see patients but now I had to process their clinical situation. I have seen a lot of growth in myself over the past few years. In LP, we would receive yellow cards with objectives relating to the body unit we were covering at that time. For example, some of the objects would be take a history and perform a neuro exam for the neuro block or perform an abdominal exam for GI. As evidenced by the monitor comments for my first OSCE, I had a lot of room for improvement!

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With each passing year, my skills increased and by M4 year I did my sub-I in the CVICU where I had to run through every body system during the patient presentation! Looking at my CPAs from my pediatric pulm elective and my sub-I, I have certainly come a long way.

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Additionally, my experience with ultrasound has helped me think about a patient’s complete clinical picture. I was on a scanning shift and it was thought that a patient has acute cholecystitis. The scanning team came in and asked the patient about their symptoms which they reported to be abdominal pain, pelvic pain and right leg pain that weren’t associated with eating. Upon scanning, we found numerous gallstones but there were no other sonographic signs of cholecystitis and the patient’s WBC and LFTs were normal. This experience helped show me that I can’t focus in on one finding or lab result and that for optimal patient care, the whole clinical picture needs to be taken into account. CEO 1.2.

Thinking ahead to residency, my goals for patient care are two fold. My first goal is to learn to give clear, concise and effective patient handoffs. This will benefit my future patients by minimizing mistakes and making sure that there is follow-up for any leftover actionable items. My second goal is to try and take a few extra minutes thinking about the patient’s diagnosis and lab results to make sure that the entire clinical picture fits. It is easy to overlook other factors once a preliminary diagnosis has been established.