So I've sucessfully moved to Miami in this cozy little room upstairs in an Argentinian couple's house. They rent out the place to medical students all the time and things have been full of work, except for the fact that I have suddenly been super dizzy (for my medical peeps, I've been trained to NEVER use the word dizzy and instead use more accurate terms, in this case vertigo).
I had intended to write more on this blog, since I've been here since July 9th (which was also another deal). However this thing has knocked me OUT.
I've been unable to go to work at the hospital on random days, especially since it's randomly impossible to sleep since I feel like the world is spinning and I'm on a constant free-fall.
Unbelievable.
I've since been diagnosed with Vestibular Neuritis - which is essentially and as far as we know an infection of the inner part of your ear that's responsible for balance, by a virus.
Virus = no medications for it.
So essentially I'm stuck like this for 2-4 weeks. Which is fine, since there's no permanent damage, but it really sucks since I'm feeling like what we call in the navy a skiver - someone who gets away with not doing work - and I also have not really been feeling well enough to go out and discover Miami.
I'm just in a rut in my bed with randomly doing questions from the online tests to prepare for the boards part 2, watching netflix, and just reading. When I don't feel like I'm in orbit.
Hoping this thing passes soon, and I an live life again.
Monday 20 August 2012
Saturday 7 April 2012
Evacuate
So these six months are pretty much the worst I've ever had to go through in anything. Seriously things are so terrible that I've just wanted to quit and go home and I've asked for a transfer out of this hospital but no dice- the municipal government is in charge of all this and they won't let any switching of horses mid-race.
So here's what's so bad.
There's a specialist who comes and sees the patients like any other hospital system. But in Mexico the attending specialist is not a part of the hospital staff- they are a total free agent and the hospital acts like a health hotel more than anything. And since the attending has no ties or responsibility to anyone but their patient, they leave little to no notes with repercussions.
You can imagine what a liability nightmare this is for hospitals, so how do they get around this?
Enter fifth-year interns.
Since there's an extra year of training not done anywhere else, it's a fifth year's job to read the specialists' mind and write out or copy the progress notes that an attending wrote/ did not write. Coupled with that we also do a full clinical history, and then proceed to re do the entire history again in a different format called an intake form. Same info, different form.
All this leads to a hell of a lot of paperwork that just ends up in litigation standby just in case someone sues the hospital, and is not read by anyone except the boss, who is in charge of correcting spelling, grammar and syntax. Every day.
We also are on call every third day to essentially do said paperwork any time of the day.
This leads to a schedule where we get anything resembling over 24 hours off only every three weeks.
And we were just told that we have to attend mandatory classes on Saturday, even if this lands on that sweetest of times when you get more than 24 full hours off.
All this for $60 dollars every two weeks of work.
And this is one of
the -good- jobs in this country.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
So here's what's so bad.
There's a specialist who comes and sees the patients like any other hospital system. But in Mexico the attending specialist is not a part of the hospital staff- they are a total free agent and the hospital acts like a health hotel more than anything. And since the attending has no ties or responsibility to anyone but their patient, they leave little to no notes with repercussions.
You can imagine what a liability nightmare this is for hospitals, so how do they get around this?
Enter fifth-year interns.
Since there's an extra year of training not done anywhere else, it's a fifth year's job to read the specialists' mind and write out or copy the progress notes that an attending wrote/ did not write. Coupled with that we also do a full clinical history, and then proceed to re do the entire history again in a different format called an intake form. Same info, different form.
All this leads to a hell of a lot of paperwork that just ends up in litigation standby just in case someone sues the hospital, and is not read by anyone except the boss, who is in charge of correcting spelling, grammar and syntax. Every day.
We also are on call every third day to essentially do said paperwork any time of the day.
This leads to a schedule where we get anything resembling over 24 hours off only every three weeks.
And we were just told that we have to attend mandatory classes on Saturday, even if this lands on that sweetest of times when you get more than 24 full hours off.
All this for $60 dollars every two weeks of work.
And this is one of
the -good- jobs in this country.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
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