Morning guys. I'm Siobhan, a first year medical resident.
Currently I'm on an infectious diseases rotation.
So these are the specialists that deal with every type of infection that you can imagine, anything from pneumonia
to HIV or parasitic infections. So today
I'm going to bring you to the hospital and give you a peek at what this specialty is like. Stick around to the end of
this video and hear this week's featured Q&A. I'll be answering the question: How do you manage to memorize so much?
So after getting to the hospital, I met up with the infectious diseases team. So that's
the other resident who's on the team who is an R5 or PGY5.
And that means that he's been a doctor for five years
and he's in his last year of specializing as an infectious disease doctor, as well as my staff who's the main one in charge. And
we look at the 30 patients that we have to see today and divide up,
you know, who's gonna be going to see which patients. But first, the first thing
I have to do is actually go and see a new consult in the emergency department and we've been told they have a really bad infection
on their skin of their leg. And I'm suspecting it's probably cellulitis,
so we'll see once I get down there and the idea is
we're going to look at the antibiotics to start and give them an idea of how long to keep going with those antibiotics.
One thing that I really love about infectious diseases so far is that
we're always gonna go all over the hospital to see patients,
because everyone gets infections. So we get to go to the orthopedic ward, like I'm going to right now,
but also the medicine ward, the surgical ward, everywhere. That reminds me, ehm...
One of you had asked me a question a while back saying:
What is a ward? And I guess I say that a lot and I never really explained. It's the same thing as a unit,
same thing as a floor.
It's how we
talk about parts of the hospital, so on one ward you'll have a group of patients who have their rooms there,
you'll have a group of nurses who look after people there. So it's a way of organizing things and usually it's by specialty.
So many stairs, it's hard to walk up the stairs and talk at the same time, I'm getting out of breath.
Here we go, up to the urology floor now, so
infections to the kidneys or urinary tract infections, that's where I come in. All right, so now
I'm heading to surgical step-down. So basically these are patients who come out of surgery.
I'm actually going to see a patient who's had plastic surgery.
Not the cosmetic type that you think, but when people have bad infections on
their face or on their skin
and they need to have skin taken from a different part of their body and placed in that area to replace it, so
that's where I'm heading now.
So I just got my flu shot
and you just have to allow me this one little soapbox moment. Basically before med school I used to always say ''Well,
I never get the flu and why should I get the flu shot, because I never get sick.'' And
that's when things change. In med school I realized that the flu shot, it's not actually all about me. It's
actually about protecting other people, so it's about protecting little newborns
and it's about protecting people who are on medications or who are immune compromised. So
maybe people who are going through chemotherapy,
it could be older people who don't have the good immune systems anymore. Those are the people that if they get sick,
they can end up in hospital.
They can get really really sick, so it's our job as a society to do what we can to protect them. So
that's my little plug, always talk to your docto,r always talk to a pharmacist to find out if there's a reason you can't get it.
But if you can, I really suggest it. Alright, on to the next. Now
I'm heading to the critical care unit, so these are patients who are often intubated,
who are very sick and
may have more than one infection going on even.
Okay, and next I'm heading to the nephrology ward, so basically I'm going to see patients
who've had kidney transplants,
which
puts them at a high risk for getting different types of infections that most of us don't normally
see or most of us don't normally get. So doing that, I've got two patients there.
And then I'm heading to meet the team and then review everything that I've done today.
So alright, we just finished going around and seeing all the patients as a team. And it's just quick, because we've seen them once already today.
And we're just going around with our staff to make sure everyone's on the same page, we all agree with what we're doing.
And yeah... Now
I just need to dictate a consult, the one that I did this morning, and just write a note on the computer basically and
then I can get out of here.
Finally got home and now it's time to answer the featured question the day, which is: How do you manage to memorize so much? And
I think the first thing is just to say there's no one way to do this. There's no one secret method. It's about repetition,
it's about finding things that are useful for you,
probably it's going to end up being a combination of different strategies. Okay, so let's get down to some practical tips. First
I would say that cue cards are a huge asset when you're trying to memorize things and just drill down
specific concepts. So make your cue cards, try to find some way to have them on your phone so
you can flip through them on regular basis.
But if you're looking to figure out big concepts and how they link together, which can be helpful to memorize,
I would say get away from your computer, get away from your phone. Take out a piece of paper and start drawing out
diagrams and once you've got in a diagram that makes sense to you,
actually take a picture of it, put it into your notes and
then refer back to it, because that image will then get stuck into your mind and be sort of a memory cue for you.
Another great resource are things like
question banks, often those are for purchase. I did ended up getting one in medical school called UWorld. Currently in residency
I'm using one called MKSAP,
but really it can do whatever you find useful
and it's just a way to see what you know and what you don't know. Then when you feel like you've got things down pat,
try actually teaching it to someone. It'll show you where you're missing concepts,
maybe a term that you don't remember when you're actually saying it out loud.
And if there's no one around, just like talk out loud.
You don't have to be actually presenting it to a particular person or actually teaching a real person. Last thing,
don't worry if you're forgetting things, because that is normal. It's all about repetition.
Don't get disheartened,
just keep practicing and those little connections in your brain are being made all the time.
So those are the main strategies that I use, I hope you find that helpful.
Let me know in the comments below if you have any other strategies that you can suggest or that you find really helpful. And
comment below if you have any questions that you want answered next week as a featured question.
Don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already and I will chat with you guys really soon. So bye for now.
