Every month, I switch rotations. As an intern, those switches occurred on the first of the month; as a resident, I now switch on the 28th. Just like I  think of the year starting and stopping on July 1st, I have a tendency to think of my months as only have 28 days. I mistakenly assume that I should get a paycheck on the 28th and have often planned for that, leaving me a bit in a lurch for those last couple of days (not good).

So, my October starts tomorrow. I switch from the relatively benign rheumatology (rheumaholiday as it were) rotation, where I had clinics every day and every weekend off, to the inpatient stroke team. I knew it was going to be a rough month. I hate switching from the medicine department (where I’ve spent the last 3 months) to the neuro department (where I’ll be spending the next 4) – I haven’t done neuro for several months, I find neuro to be more challenging and difficult intellectually, and the services can be overwhelmingly busy as there are no caps to admissions and we are constantly admitting and discharging patients. To say that I’ve been not looking forward to this would be an understatement.

A couple of weeks ago, my program director approached me and stated that they were having problems with one of the junior residents. He didn’t know enough, he couldn’t be trusted to do an accurate exam, he had problems with managing more than 2 patients, he’s lazy, etc, etc, etc. In the end, they decided to hold him back a month and guess who gets to inherit the problem child and attempt to remediate him? *sigh* I spent an hour getting sign-out tonight from the current senior and wow, it sounds like a disaster. Hopefully, I’ll be able to meet with him tomorrow and establish some rules.

I was going to go into a whole rant about how I think this stems from whom my program director is recruiting and accepting into the residency, but it’s getting late, and I need to be in to work early tomorrow.

So instead, I’ll leave you with the latest pic (that I’ve gotten. The parents have been lax about getting them posted!) of my nephew:

Laura’s threatening that his hair isn’t as red as I was told. I think she just needs to eat more carrots. *nods* That’s how I got my red hair, my mom told me.