ER Shadowing

Since I didn't make the cut into med school this year, I have been trying to find some more opportunities to shadow and keep involved in medicine. I am interested in doing emergency medicine, and a friend of mine actually shadowed in an ER.  She was able to give me the contact information and help set it up so I could start shadowing there too!  Awesome!  Yesterday was my first day, well night, and it was very interesting.    It's a smaller ER, so most of the major traumas get shipped over to the bigger hospitals, but it was still very steady.  The staff was very laid back and fun, and due to the way they change shifts, I got to shadow two different Dr.'s.  The cases I sat in on were very similar to what you would see at a primary care/family practice, which I find kinda funny, and of course i got to see a couple drug seeker cases.  I think I was more interested in the drug seekers than the primary care cases because of the wonderful acting.  :o) The sad thing was the patients were only in their early 20's! What a waste.

Another sad case was a 90 yo diabetic patient with gangrene in both feet/legs.  They were in pretty bad shape, and the patient was refusing surgery, which meant he was going to die. The family understood the patient's wishes, and they all seemed to understand what was going to happen, and they were fine with that.  The patient was admitted and another physician was coming in to talk over some other options, but there was no guarantee the other options were going to work either.


I really enjoyed seeing the cases that came in, and I really enjoyed the chance to talk to the ER doc's.  After talking to Dr. F. and hearing how he went from family practice to emergency med, and the reasons he changed,  I am thinking that emergency med is a good fit for me.  I know I will have a lot of experiences in medical school and something else might come along, but right now emergency med is really calling to me.  The variety of cases, the calm before the storm, the storm, the eye of the storm, and then the calm again.  I find that I do really well under pressure and I like to be busy.  Yes, it is nice to be able to sit down for a breather, but being busy keeps me focused.  I think I am really going to enjoy this experience and hopefully I can get a letter of recommendation out of it!  Oh, and Dr. F went to KU too, plus he has family in Bozeman, MT. :o)   He was pretty cool and I really liked his doctoring style, so I hope I get to shadow him some more.  I'll keep ya'll updated!