Internal Medicine

I can’t believe I am done with IM! It was a beast! I have never studied so hard in my life! I actually finished last Wednesday since last Thursday was Thanksgiving, It was nice that they gave us some time off because I am pretty burned out. Haha. I had a checklist of things I wanted to do during those 4 days from doing my laundry to pre-studying for Surgery but with all the family parties, birthdays, baby showers, etc, I didn’t even make it half-way down the list. The important things are done though and I feel refreshed from having a few days off. I seriously think I need a week off between every rotation! Here are some pictures:






I was going to update the blog sooner but to be honest, I hadn’t gotten my shelf scores yet and I was scared I had failed. I talked before about how internal medicine covers 80% of what we need to know this year and to be honest, even with all my studying, I didn’t feel great coming out of the exam. The question prompts were long and I felt really rushed. I doubt anybody feels good after shelf exams but I was very very scared I had failed. Well…today we got our scores back and I passed! I don’t know if I did well enough to honor but who cares! I am just SO SO glad I don’t have to retake this test. Haha. I even held off prepping for surgery for fear I would have to drop out or something.

For those out there in med school, I am compiling a list of tips/books I used for each rotation and my scores so you can have an idea of what it takes to achieve various grades but I’m not sure it would be pertinent for students going straight through or for people at other schools. Thoughts? I also hesitate because there are a lot of blogs/forums on this already and who cares about little old me but if some of you would find it helpful, I’d be happy to post.

Next up….surgery! I had orientation for the last 2 days, which is kindof nice because it was only 8-5. Tomorrow I start outpatient surgery for 1.5 weeks then I have burn for 2 weeks followed by one week of night shift and 2 weeks of general inpatient surgery at the VA. Needless to say, I am not very excited about surgery. I heard people are mean but at least I have Christmas break sandwiched in between and guess what!?!??!!? Dave and I are going to Costa Rica! It is seriously the only thing driving me right now.  Since hours on surgery are pretty bad, I don’t think I’ll be posting again till it is over but here are my thoughts on Medicine:

Things I liked:
  • The material is bread and butter so everything we learn in medical school translates. This means residency won’t be a huge learning curve.
  • I know I can be very good as an internist
  • Being a hospitalist doesn’t look so bad; you are on every other week but when you are off, you can be completely off which is nice. If you choose to work as a nocturnist, you can make over 200K working 11 nights a month! That is amazing.
  • Residency in IM is only 3 years and you start with 4 weeks of vacation a year which isn’t bad. In addition, most doors are still open. You can either transfer into another field (aka the back door route) or do fellowships in a number of subspecialties.


Things I disliked:
  • Obese, diabetic, hypertensive, patients with CHF and sleep apnea. I got a lot of them and they are not my favorites. I think I have a hard time taking care of people who don’t take care of themselves
  • Alcoholics for the same reason as above
  • Hierarchy; I know all of medicine is hierarchal but this really got to me on internal med. I think if you have a good team, IM can be amazing but when you hate working with people, life can really suck
  • The schedule: I only had to do three weeks of inpatient because of thanksgiving break but working 6am-8pm got old fast. Maybe it won’t be as bad if I didn’t have to study every day on top of working but it was HARD.
  • Outpatient medicine; I find outpatient anything really boring. I am dreading my family medicine rotation because it is essentially all outpatient. A lot of people really like it because the hours are nice but I get sooooooo bored.
  • Cardiology: I had to do 2 weeks of subspecialty IM and I picked cardiology. I think it was super important to learn but needless to say, I will not be going into cardiology.


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