the REAL deal.

Today was my first full day of clinical rotations. I put in 12 1/2 hours. I am clueless and awkward... but its so awesome. I have learned so much in such a short time, and little is medical. Most of it is just human reactions and interactions...

At the end of the day, we were standing around our resident, just talking about how things work with our clinical years and what to expect and how to get the most out of it. He said something that really hit me. "This is the culmination of your first two years of school. You know that patient you saw today and wrote about in that chart? She has a family. Its the same family that we walked by in the hall. The family we gave hope to. That is no simulation. That is real."

Its so amazing to think that I learned all those things in the first two years, but they help me so little now. They never taught me how to give hope to a worried husband or to comfort a dying young woman or encourage a little boy before he gets a shot. They didn't teach me the bedside manner. That is what this is about. You train to become a physician, but you learn to be a doctor. This is not a simulation. This is not a multiple choice question. This is not a test. This. is. real.