Residency 3.9: Green Team

"I'm tired. The kind of tired you can't sleep off."

I'm watching 'Blue Bloods'--my new favorite past time--and Frank's talking about retiring. I'm not ready to retire quite yet, but I am tired. This month was long. If you'll remember, Green Team is our senior-only inpatient team. This month, due to some unforeseen scheduling difficulties, our teams were restructured and we ended up with a bigger team and a bigger census. Made for busy days and sometimes painfully long rounds. Even with having my favorite attending on for two weeks of the month, it was draining.

I think one of the things I'll take away from this month is just an appreciation for the breadth of our training. When you're on inpatient, you hear about every interesting kid who comes through the hospital, even if they aren't on your team. Every diagnostic dilemma, PICU transfer, bizarre test result. We see some really weird things; things that you only read about in textbooks, and have access to awesome specialists. Part of the reason it's hard to reflect on these months is that we see SO much that by the end, it's somewhat of a blur. It's hard to retain anything when you never have time to sit down. But I know that some of it must stick.

Yesterday, I took checkout on two different kids who were being transferred to our team. Both were complicated stories in their own right, and as I listened to the check out, I found myself formulating and adapting a differential and a plan on the fly, anticipating what my next five steps were going to be. And I realized that the scope of our experience prepares us really well. When you've seen just about everything that can cause abdominal pain or seizures, it makes it a lot easier to look for the zebras, or to rule them out.

So, I suppose it should be a good tired. Because it means I'm becoming a better doctor. Which won't make it any easier to get up at 4:40 tomorrow morning to head into the PICU. So off to bed I go.