Patients and Sponges

Today I sat through ten hours of UVA Graduate Medical Education Orientation.  Basically that means I sat in an auditorium while lots of people talked at me and the 200 other incoming interns about rules and regulations to follow during the next 3 years.  But we also got some motivating speeches too!  From that exhausting 10 hours, these were the two main points I was left with:

Patients sacrifice of themselves for my education.  This was stated by the CEO of the UVA Health Systems in a very inspiring speech on how UVA is one of, if not the, best hospitals in the country (though I'm sure he's biased a bit) and how they picked us to work here and we should feel very special, yada yada.  He mentioned how most our patients come from the Commonwealth of Virginia and West Virginia, which are mostly rural states.  The amount of people that walk through the doors at UVA in any given day is more than the amount of people that live in their city.  They come to our huge hospital sick and scared, because their doctors can't diagnose or treat their illnesses.  They then have nurses and staff tell them when to wake up, sleep, and eat; people take their blood and other bodily fluids; residents poke and prod them in other personal places.  Yet they do all this willingly, because they know this is a teaching hospital and because they are here they will get the best care possible.  And because this is a teaching hospital, the primary goal (aside from treating patients), is to teach future doctors.  To teach me.  That's a pretty humbling thought.  And a good one to keep in mind as I know I will be stressed and tired when I enter those patients' rooms; I always should be mindful of what they've gone through so they can teach me.

Be a paranoid sponge.  This was stated by a trauma surgeon who also happens to be the head honcho over patient safety.  He had a (pretty frightening) talk on how accidents happen in the hospital ... because people get cocky, or tired, etc.  He basically said our first year, he doesn't expect us to be experts or to diagnose rare diseases on our own ... he expects us to be paranoid sponges.  To be nervous to the point that we're afraid of our own shadows so that we make as few mistakes as possible, and when we make mistakes (which will happen), we learn everything we can from them.  I think I will have no problem with the paranoid part, and hopefully the sponge part won't be too bad, either!

More orientation over the next few days ... Stu is coming in town for the weekend ... and soon I will post on my favorite things about Virginia!