Personal Narrative: My Shift In Patients

Day four of clinicals was really long. The first patient was scheduled from 8 until 1, he was getting fitted for 4 crowns and an implant crown. When the patient came in he had a horrible odor and looked like he hasn’t taken care of himself in months. I seated him down and the dental assistant just glanced at his teeth and looked at me strangely and whispered come here and look. I look in this old man’s mouth and saw nothing but a brown layer of plaque and calculus build up and it disgusted me. How could someone not take care of their selves? Anyways, we ended up sending him to the hygienist's room next to us and they cleaned his teeth extra good. He came back into the room and Dr. Williams came in and quickly did a check up on his teeth and

I was scared. I was just plain scared. The constant sound of a shrinking beeping. The smells of the antiseptic hospital ward. I was in shock and in complete disbelief. Why I am here? I should be at home doing my homework for the next day, but I am not. I am here. Now, I am lying on a flat patient cot. The yellow walls in my room had a distinct feeling that I was in a psychiatric ward was had utterly cold, however everyone on the floor was welcoming and willing to help. Nurses are bombarding into the room asking questions. In the meantime, my left arm is swollen from the IV stuck in me. I feel like a toddler having no idea about her surroundings. This all could have been avoided; however now it does not matter. I am glued to a sterile bed. A

Week three in clinical was difficult for me, I had a great experience overall but I hated seeing and holding a baby that had passed away at 21 weeks. To know what the family could possibly be going through was heartbreaking. I wouldn’t exactly know what to do if I was with the patient and her family exactly. I do know that I did place her in the room when she was admitted to triage. I do feel good about seeing the scenario play out, while being a student rather than being in the field alone. Other than that I was able to see the beginning stage of labor as well as a C-section. Everyone was so bent out of shape on making sure I eat and that I don’t faint, but it seriously wasn’t bad. As a matter of fact I was too intrigued with the mother rather

The sharp scratch of pencil lead sprinting across thick layers of paper, rapid rustles of flipping pages, and the neurotic tapping of pens on hard wooden desk surfaces are sounds that I grew very accustomed to during my junior year of high school. I was taking a class called Clinical Rotations, which allowed me to rotate through different units at two major San Antonio hospitals. Being constantly surrounded by illness, chaos, and frigid sterility wore heavily on my angst-ridden, seventeen year old self. But despite the stressful surroundings and slightly depressing aura, it was during these rotations that I met someone who truly changed my life.

I was born on September 20th, 1997 on the coast of Virginia Beach. Now living in South Carolina I am 19 years old and living a very healthy and eloquent lifestyle. As I filled out the Real Age questionnaire I encountered many questions that made me think if my diet and health were flawed, while other times it seemed as if I was the pinnacle of health. I found at the end it had me down as a 16-year-old teenager. This three-year difference in what my age and what Real Age had put me down for really opens my eyes about how well of a healthy lifestyle I am living, and motivates me to continue living it to the best of my ability.

From my first engagement with John until now, I maintained the MI spirit by honoring and accepting his autonomy, providing support, evoking hope, and by recognizing my crucial role in supporting a client's journey of change. I also provided a supportive and welcoming environment, while maintaining a sense of neutrality and equipoise, and being cognizant of my role as a clinician (as opposed to a teacher, confronter, or mentor), and the effect it has on the establishment of our collaborative therapeutic relationship. Throughout most of my interactions with John, I used the cardinal OARS (Open-ended questions, Affirmations, Reflective listening, Summarizations) techniques commonly used in MI (Miller

I immediately called in my assistant, Rosa, to help me in the operation. According to Melissa her mother got hit by a car. I knew how bad it could have been, and I was relieved that her condition wasn’t so bad. She had bad scrapes and after I took the x-ray, I saw that she broke 3 of her

February 9th. We watch the nurses prep him for the surgery he’s about to endure. I hardly know what to do with myself, between the constant shaking and crying, I am a mess. I try my best to be strong for him and keep telling myself everything will be okay. We find ourselves again, waiting not-so-patiently for more news. 4 hours later, surgery is over and we are speaking with his surgeon. Thankfully everything went well, metal screws and rods were put in and he’s good as new again; except, not so much. Not following directions during recovery could result in paralyzation, that scares me. I can not worry, though. That’s the worst thing I can do. Each day following has a new goal to be completed on the road to recovery. He struggled with some but was doing fairly well. Issues appeared at the same time he was progressing, he had trouble urinating, eating, and taking long, deep breaths to prevent getting pneumonia. After 8 long days he is released to go home. He was on a very speedy road to recovery, and none of us could be

I digested the fact that something is appreciated only if it's about to be taken away. I remember all the doctors buzzing around her like flies; her life was at stake and at the last moment the doctors saving her. Examining the doctors they seemed nothing less than heroes to me. That’s when I realized this is the profession I wanted to pursue. My first step was volunteering to change her bandages and measure the amount of blood coming out of the drain tubes and then making a report to the doctor so he can see how fast she is healing. After doing that I was driven by wanting to follow this profession at all

Before the surgery, a nurse and I had visited her hospital room. The patient was an upbeat, talkative person who seemed strangely out of place at the hospital. She led most of our conversations, talking about her son and her daughter with whom she lived. She complained about them heartily, but the caring tone in her voice was apparent. They had recently moved into a new house and so far she had been constantly getting lost in it. She described it as if it was the most difficult problem in her life.

The first thing that comes to my mind about this clinical experience would be exhausting. I had only three hours of sleep because I had forgotten I had a prior obligation later in the evening, so was unable to leave Alamosa until 2100, so I did not get home till 2330. I had to get up at 0400 to then go to SCCF. Four hours asleep, while sick was not a good idea. It was an extremely tiring day that I feel like I am probably missing something in this journal.

On the day of surgery, August 5th, my mom woke me up early. The car ride to the cities was quiet besides some encouraging words my mom tried to cheer me up with. She told me it would go just fine countless times, knowing how scared i was. When we finally arrived

In all of my previous experiences in the healthcare field, I have not had a single moment or challenge that I disliked about the profession. Even working as a scribe, I absolutely loved the change of pace in working a late night shift at one hospital and then getting up several hours later to work another shift at a different hospital’s ED. With this in mind, the question of naming one single aspect of being a physician I think I would like best is a difficult one to answer. As so many other premedical students, medical students, and current physicians, I love the satisfaction of solving a problem to help someone. This is truly what I expect to like most as a physician, particularly when working with a patient who suffers from several chronic

Brrrrrrringgg! The high-pitched tone on my phone rings temptingly, but I manage to resist the urge to look at the new message. Reading under the dim light in my bedroom, I can still hear the clatter of plates and busy shuffling outside my door as the night turns black over the colonial city of Leon. Luckily, my shift is over, and I can now try to focus on my schoolwork. At 12 years old, I started working as the cashier in my parents’ tiny Spanish restaurant. We moved to Leon in search of a better future, leaving broken promises behind as well as a host of caring friends that I would never see again. It would take a while, but, eventually, I would see reality through the eyes of an adult, even though I was just a kid.

When I was eleven years I had experienced two fundamental shifts in my life, though at the time I was quite unaware of the long lasting implications of these shifts. The first shift occurred when I had my first panic attack. The second shift occurred later in the year when I was made of my father’s worsening alcoholism. It is these two seemingly independent events to which I pinpoint the foundation of my own feminism. Over the next decade, these two flourishing fragments of myself would no longer be able to exist parallely in my own conscious. Instead I would begin to understand the intersection of my experiences of anxiety, emotional abuse, and alcoholism.