This is a photo of one of my last surgical cases during my surgery rotation. From the beginning of my surgical rotation I remember feeling overwhelmed and just a little anxious about my return to the medical environment after 5 years of not even looking at anything remotely medical. My first week was rough on vascular surgery. I got pimped on questions I never knew to review for; in fact I didn’t even realize what it meant to prepare for surgical cases and I had forgotten most of what I had covered my first two years in medical school in terms of patient interactions/interviews/anatomy. After a less than perfect evaluation from that first week I realized that being at a patient bedside is an entirely different experience than being with their samples at the bench. However, critical feedback is always appreciated and after defending my thesis and submitting multiple grants/papers I understand that a part of the learning process is to be able to understand and internalize critical feedback no matter how harsh into a learning experience to prepare for the next time. While the evalulation was harsher than I expected, I realized the importance of having someone who cared enough to sit down and really think about ways that I could be better.
Over the last few weeks, I have felt myself becoming more and more acclimated to the clinical environment. I found myself enjoying pre-rounds. I’ve had amazing mentors in the form of residents and fellows who have really encouraged my clinical development in every way possible. I’ve been entrusted to write notes, to present as many patients as I want each morning, to help with discharges and more importantly to shake off the inevitable feeling of imposter syndrome that is almost always present from time to time. One of my proudest accomplishments was learning how to do a running suture and being allowed to help close up in the OR. My supervising resident (Dr. Jalilvand) and attending (Dr. Phay) while on the endocrine service of surgical oncology had let me help close the neck incisions on their patients for most of the cases. From not knowing how to tie knots to confidently executing a single handed tie and being able to pre-round on patients on my own I know that I have come a long way in just the past few weeks. However, I also understand that medicine, like everything else is a career of lifelong learning and that I have only just scratched the surface of the machine that is the human body. With both trepidation and excitement, I look forward to learning and improving my skills over the next year. While I know that there will be many more obstacles to overcome, I know that ultimately with enough passion and work, nothing is insurmoutable.