Rotation Summary

My emergency medicine rotation presented many interesting patients that taught me about medicine and how to be a better provider. Many of the patients that I saw did not speak English, and I learned to be patient and understand as patients tried to explain their symptoms to a translator. I also learned how to read patient’s facial expressions and improved my physical exam to ensure that I was getting an accurate understanding of the patient and their presentation. I also had the opportunity to work with many wonderful Attendings, PAs, residents and nurses throughout my rotation. I enjoyed working with a wide array of people as I found that this allowed me to learn from everyone. I learned how to do IVs with ultrasounds from one provider, while another provider was extremely proficient at performing complete eye exams. I was happy to see that I was able to improve in both of these areas, particularly because I had not had experience with these before this rotation. At the end of my last rotation I mentioned that I was hopeful I would continue to improve my neurological exams. Throughout my ER rotation I had the opportunity to complete these exams multiple times and was pleased that I seemed to be improving each time. An area which I hope to continue improving in is the workup of trauma/level 2 patients. Although I did not see so many patients in the trauma bay, I want to become more comfortable treating them and knowing the proper steps to take. I also want to feel more comfortable providing a history to a supervisor and be sure to include all of the important information that I gathered. I found that I would sometimes forget to relay certain information that I had asked and would like to continue working on this. Along the same lines, I hope to continue to improve my history taking. One thing that I noticed is that I miss certain questions that are appropriate to ask depending on the patient’s presentation. This is something that I noticed improving throughout the last 5 weeks and I hope to continue to master this skill.

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