So I got this Anesthesia midterm exam tomorrow and I have no idea how it's going to go down. All I've heard about the exams on this rotation is that they were ridiculously hard (apparently it's all resident/fellow level material 😐) and that the questions on these exams were very nitpicky. After having read ten dense chapters of this “Basics of Anesthesia” book I've been lugging around these past couple of weeks, I can see why this midterm has the potential to be so difficult. I have no clue what questions I'm going to get, and there's no way that I'm going to know everything that I'll probably need to know for this test. There's just way too much information to absorb. It also doesn't help that I'm not that motivated to study day and night for it, not only because it feels pointless to do so (I've had so many people tell me how notoriously difficult it is, including Anesthesia residents), but also because I have no interest in going into this specialty and won't be using the majority of what I've been learning after this rotation is over.

However, I've been mindful enough to seriously work on skills like establishing IV access, bag-mask-ventilation and intubation, because I will absolutely need them in my future career as a Pediatrician. I've also picked the topic of “Pediatric Airway Management” as my presentation topic (I'm required to present a topic to my classmates and an attending physician, in case you missed that on my last post) because again, I'm going to tailor my experience in this rotation as much as I can to my career path. And by picking that topic, I'll be more engaged in creating my presentation because I'll be learning very useful things that I'll more than likely be implementing in residency.

Speaking of, I finally finished my interview season last Tuesday at UVA! The interview day was a great one, and I had a wonderful experience overall while at Charlottesville. I had actually never been there before, so it was cool to be able to briefly check the town out. I'll admit, it's a neat little town; I could see why some people would be happy settling down there for some time. And because it's a college town, the presence of UVA is very palpable throughout the area. The people in the pediatric department at UVA were all very kind and welcoming, which I really appreciated. Overall, I'm glad that I decided to make the drive up there to complete that interview, even though I had to reschedule it from last month and I ended up missing a day of my current rotation because of it.

I must say though, the scenery up to Charlottesville from Winston-Salem and back was quite dreary. 😅 Although I spent the majority of my childhood in Virginia, I had never been in those parts of the state before. Some of the towns I drove through looked pretty rundown and because of the season, the trees were all bare. Plus, I saw a massive Confederate flag waving in the wind at some point during my drive back. It was such a stark reminder that I was in the South and in a very different area of the state that I called home for so long. I sure wasn't trying to get stuck around any of those parts, especially at night. So you already know that I was zipping across that state highway as fast as I legally could lol.

In addition to finishing the interview trail this past week, I got the chance to sit in on a Grand Rounds talk about caring for patients who are transgender and I also participated in my first Anesthesia long call shift. The Grand Rounds talk was an interesting one, where a speech pathologist talked about the importance of recognizing the culture of this population of people and how to help them feel welcome when they come to establish care with physicians. I learned a lot about what it's like to live in this world as a person who identifies as transgender, and I realized just how much I didn't know about this population. I can't even begin to imagine the lack of knowledge that some people, especially those who aren't accepting of other cultures in the first place, have for this community of people. Listening to the presentation also forced me to think about how my beliefs of transgender people have changed over the years as I've matured and how societies around the world severely marginalize this population on a daily basis. I'm glad to have been able to attend this presentation and while I'm sure that there were some people in the audience who would have rather not have been there or didn't necessarily agree with what the speaker was saying, being exposed to this information is very important because it can very much impact the care of a patient who they may end up caring for in the future.

In regards to my 15-hour long call shift, it wasn't really that bad at all. I actually was able to get some of my rotation assignments done during my shift and I also witnessed some very memorable events as I followed the on-call Anesthesia resident around the hospital. Some of these events included watching the resident perform an awake intubation on a patient using a fiberscope and participating in a Level I trauma in the ED, where I watched a code take place and unfortunately witnessed the life of a patient end. I have another long call shift tomorrow, and there's no telling what experiences are going to come out of that. All I can do is gear up and prepare for anything!

That's all I got today. I have another couple weeks of Anesthesia ahead of me before I move on to my next rotation, which is one focused on Immigrant Health & Public Health. While I'm excited about that rotation, I still don't really know what it is going to look like…hopefully I get that figured out sooner rather than later lol. I also will be heading to Nashville this upcoming weekend for the quarterly SNMA National Leadership Institute, where I'll be participating in educational sessions, catching up with friends from across the country, and engaging talks with the Board of Directors about what the Annual Medical Education Conference in April is going to look like. I've never been to Nashville, so I'll also do a little sightseeing if I have time! Should be a great experience! 😄

I hope that you have a phenomenal week! Wish me luck on this test tomorrow! 😅

“Be the kind of person that you want people to think you are.” – Socrates

– Black Man, M.D.