I spent one week in Bad Hersfeld with two uni mates for an obligatory chief-supervised internship, which serves as preparation for the four one-month unsupervised, doc-supporting internships - called Famulatur - we have to absolve in the coming 3 years. I surely learnt a ton after that one week in Bad Hersfeld, but honestly speaking, it felt more like a vacation than anything else. Our hotel stay was paid, our breakfast was paid, our lunch was paid, and we even received evening snack packages. Our working time was completely flexible, and we of course chose comfortable options - coming to work at around nine in the morning, leaving at around three in the evening. That left us with a lot time for chillaxing afternoon and evening activities like sports, going to the cinema, or even having poker nights. ;)
But yeah, back to the working part of that week. We were assigned to the Chief of Cardio in the Bad Hersfeld Clinic. It was the first time I personally experienced what it is to be a "demigod in white" - a German metaphor for the godly image of doctors. It is true though - I mean you get treated completely differently when you run around in the hospital with your white coat on. Patients greet you nicely, other hospital staff smile at you politely. Whereas without white coat, no one really pays attention to you. We sensed the huge difference just between when we went in and headed to the changing room in normal clothes and when we walked to the chief's office in white coats. It was really, really obvious. lol
Another thing we learnt in Bad Hersfeld that I think is quite valuable is the Chief's advice to us: Always set an opinion on things you see, especially when in the process of learning. It doesn't matter if it's right or wrong - you can only improve with mistakes made. No one was born with the ability to differentiate between the pathological sounds of the heart or lung, that's one thing for sure. Obviously, the few first times we auscultated patients, we had no idea which sound was physiological and which one was pathological, let alone differentiating between the pathological sounds. But the Chief encouraged us to make mistakes, and I can only say that it really helped. People tend to remember more things learnt from mistakes anyway. Now I'm at least already very sure of how normal lungs and a normal heart should sound like, so yay. :P
Yeah, so that's that. After the Bad-Hersfeld-week, I instantly went back home to start my internistic Famulatur in the Helios Clinic in Schkeuditz. Until now it's been only one week but I think it's already quite safe to say that this Famulatur is amazing. ^_^
I already absolved two months of nursing internships in that hospital before, one of which was internistic. So I already knew how nice most of the staff working there was, and some of them also remember me (and how nice I am, too :P). Back then, I befriended one young doctor named Marlene and we kind of kept in touch with each other over the years. I will always remember how she showed me so many things back then, and one thing I'll always feel so grateful for is that she explained to me how to draw blood and let me try it on her. Even though I don't feel as crazy about drawing blood anymore and have kinda realized that it's no big deal, I promised to myself that I'll have to be as cool to fresher med students as she was to me. And I'm keeping that promise now - I have let two younger med students who are doing their nursing internship draw my blood already. :P
Anyway, because I had such great experience with the staff - including doctors - in the internistic department of the Helios Clinic in Schkeuditz before, it wasn't hard for me to choose where to absolve my first Famulatur. And well, as I've already said, my first week there has pretty much lived up to most of my expectations - which were in no way low expectations.
I have so much freedom. Beside drawing blood every morning, I don't have any other obligations. Which means that I can always choose what I want to do or see throughout the day, and everyone, really everyone, is nice enough to give thorough answers to pretty much every question I ask. I am also given the opportunity to practice the most basics skills, like - beside drawing blood - doing physical examinations from A to Z, collecting anamnesis data, wising patients up on different diagnostic and therapeutic methods, etc. That's exactly the things I've intended to learn - the basics - because, well, I have yet to learn and thus don't know much about diseases per se.
A funny thing that comes with the current situation at the hospital (which is also to my advantage, I guess,) is that every Assistenzarzt - the German equivalent to American residents - is a young female doctor. :)) On my first day I had to suppress my amused chuckles at the sight of the one male Chief sitting at one end of the table during the daily morning meeting, surrounded by two female middle-aged attendings and a dozen of young female residents. And a young female intern that is me, too. lol I know of two male attendings during my stay for the nursing internship, but one of them was on leave, and the other didn't show up at the meeting that day. So it was really just the one male Chief, and otherwise a strong oestrogene overdose. XD
The girls there are all so nice, I think for one it's because they are all so young (definitely still in their twenties), and then the clinic is a small one, too. I guess it's true what people always say about small hospitals, that the working atmosphere is less stressful and colleagues tend to help each other out more than trying to outdo and destroy one another and stuff. It also reflects in the way they treat me - a newbie and little still-know-nothing interning med student. And well, because of my enternal weakness for very competent yet still humble and kind people, I am, of course, head over heels in love with all of them. :)) It's funny that I hang out less with Marlene than I spend time with some of the other girls, like Julia who's already taken her internistic consultant exam and tends to over-explain almost every detail to me (which I find super awesome <3, but surely slows down her work a lot :P) or Franzi, who is probably the funniest doctor I've ever met. Meng, cute people are cute!
The only downside of interning is that I have to wake up early - in this case, six in the morning every day. I was so happy to sleep in on a Saturday today, but when I woke up - feeling actually really satisfied - it was only eight. :P Oh and yeah, catching some pathological bacteria or a virus isn't so low a risk, either. Since yesterday evening I've been having a light diarrhea and angina tonsillaris, and I just can't shake off the feeling that it has something to do with the one patient I draw blood from last morning who turned out to have a norovirus. >< Ugh...
But hey, by all means, medicine is my thing, and it's awesome. This statement just reaffirms itself to me over and over again. <3
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