My first day in a Family Practice Clinic

Yes, I have been in clinical environments before but they had been very focused on one sub-population (the uninsured). Today was my first day working with folks who had insurance. Boy was it a long day. My Dr. has also been opening my eyes up to the reality of it all - not just for his patients but for what toll it takes on his life.

Today I mostly shadowed the doctor (with my white coat and stethoscope) and just talked to the patients. I got to do some physical exams, such as looking in people's ears and mouths, feeling for lymph nodes, feeling for arthritis, dermal problems, etc. but most of it was just talking to the patients and understanding where they were coming from.

Out of the 29 patients that I met with the Dr., at least 5 had some sort of cancer and it really looked like their outcome was not so good. Luckily each of them was positive about the life that he or she had lived and was doing whatever they could why still possible.

Some things I did not expect to see/hear/experience today:
- pulling out a folley cathader from a 78 year old male with severe lung cancer.
- looking into the bloody vagina of an obese 20 something year old woman.
- a male physical.
- listening to the heart of a woman who didn't have a pulmonary valve
- a little girl with Hep. A
- I removed a wart from some guy's hand, and also saw photos of his colon.
- cleaning up some old lady's abscess wound (btw, Silver Sulfadiazine is amazing)
- pink eye
- people addicted to opiates, in the clinic just trying to get a high
- people with chronic pain, it sucks.
- a lady who was losing the ability to move her limbs because the nerves between the L2L3, and L3L4 region were being pinched, and even though the doctor knew how to resolve the issue, he couldn't get the right procedures done because the lady didn't have a good enough insurance plan.


man, there was so much more too, but I think I just overloaded my brain.

I get to look forward to Monday's clinic because then I will removing about 15 warts of some super-obese guy's back and underarms. go medicine!!