Organic chemistry was the big bear of undergraduate studies. I remember everyone freaking out before the class even started. People had heard from upperclassmen how tough O-Chem was and that many had failed it. I was at a critical point in my education where I could not let the opinions of others dictate my outlook. I had a strategy while enduring ...

The operating room is becoming more of a familiar place. I am much more comfortable with the preparation (positioning, shaving and draping the patient), intraoperative assisting (retracting, drilling and hammering) and wrapping up the case (suturing, bandaging and bracing). Looking back over the past month, I have logged over 40 cases with the ...

Our country is blessed to have medical regulatory boards that serve to protect patients and their providers. Some other parts of the world do not require a license or special privileges. Those countries just want help from anyone willing, and it does not always end well. So, the United States has a blessing and a curse. Since ...

This week I've been scheduled on nights, and it's been a completely different ER experience. While many of the chief complaints are the same as what I've seen during the day in the ER, the pace has been different. There is no doubt that things can get just as hectic at night as they do during the day, but for the most part, things usually tend to ...

Last week I started my internal medicine subspecialty. One thing you will learn about a rotation schedule is that it is constantly changing. Originally I was supposed to be in pain management, then it switched to renal transplant, and now it is endocrinology. This month I am in a subdivision of endocrinology that specifically sees complex ...

On day 3 of my internal medicine outpatient rotation, I was discussing the results of a preventive cardiac study with a longtime established patient and how the supervising physician values these types of studies. Her response was, “That’s why I go to an internist.” I knew right then that all “internists” were not created equally. This rotation ...

The Marquette University PA program in Milwaukee last week announced the launching of a postgraduate emergency medicine fellowship. The one-year postgraduate certificate program is a collaboration with Aurora-Sinai Medical Center and Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin. Marquette’s program is the seventh emergency medicine fellowship. The ...

If you are anything like me, familiarity offers immense comfort. When I enter a foreign environment without any idea of the routine, the faces or whether or not I can survive, I get a little uncomfortable. This would be about 75% of my rotations. However, if I know that what lies ahead is either somewhere I have been before or that there will be ...

Physician assistants are increasingly more likely to head into specialties such as surgery and emergency medicine rather than primary care, according to the News & Observer. Researchers at the Duke University PA program studied the job choices of PAs from 1997 to 2006 and found that the number of PAs going into primary care declined to 41% ...

This week I start a two-month journey into the land of family medicine. The commute will be around 45 minutes each way and my hours will be 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Compared to the emergency medicine rotation, my schedule will be a little more consistent. ...