Yesterday as I sat in our team meeting I caught myself dreaming off somewhat, and it occurred to me that my psychiatry rotation is coming to an end after what seems like a ridiculously short period of time. Six weeks flies by, and this has by and large been a hugely challenging and rewarding 6 weeks. Although some would argue that psychiatry is one of the very easiest rotations, I found that it was challenging and powerful in its own way: it's arguably the one field in medicine where a physician is armed only with his/her own therapeutic "touch" to help a patient. In an outpatient setting, antipsychotics and antidepressants rarely take effect during the time a patient is in the hospital, and it truly is the therapeutic efforts of the team: the docs, the nurses, the staff (what we call the "milieu") which makes a difference in the course of the patient's stay. So it's been moving, to say the least. I like to try to simply aim to make patients smile once or twice in my encounters with them (especially with depressed patients) because smiling in itself can make a person feel much better, all other variables held constant. That's my little contribution to their healthcare at this point in my training, and I hope it helps, even just a little.
Anyway, after six weeks of focusing on hippocampi (the area of the brain where learning and some emotional pathways reside and an area under study with respect to major depression), I move on to the North and will try my hand at the uteri: OB/GYN is up next on the list. Here goes!!!
My time in Anchorage has been busy professionally, as I'm working on my OB/GYN rotation. Two weeks have passed already, but don't worry, my experience here has far from fruitless, even outside of the hospital! Despite the fact that it has rained nonstop since I arrived (except for the last two days), I and my colleagues have managed to see some of what Alaska has to offer. To prove it, I give you two pictures; one is from the the carnival ride "10,000 Naughts" (or whatever it's called) and is a view of the Alaska State Fair. The other is a shot from a 14 mile hike taken yesterday to the East of Anchorage, along what's called the "Powerline Trail." It really is beautiful up here!! Now, off to attempting more OB/GYN...I need to figure out what goes on in the following procedures...LAVH, TVT, AP repair, supracervical hysterectomy, and a D&C with a hysteroscopy. Whoo hoo!
