Your rotations are part of your schooling. They are designed for you to bridge the gap between the classroom and practicing medicine.
You are paying money for every second year there. This is made really clear to me when I was only OB/GYN rotation. We’re in the middle of an open hysterectomy, and the surgeon was pointing out different anatomy to me. “Look down there,” he said.“ That’s her aorta.”
I politely nodded. It was great this was a structure I actually knew.
“Reach in there and feel it,” he said.
I was sort of timid, so I was a little dumbfounded that he wanted me to touch this woman’s aorta. He looked at me and said, “You’re certainly paying enough, you might as well get as much out of this you can.” And he was totally right. I felt her aorta – it was totally cool. Then they let me use a corkscrew thingamajig to pull her uterus out. So cool.
You want to get the most out of every rotation. You want to experience as much as possible. It won’t be long before you’re in practice.
Here are five things that will help you get the most out of your rotations:
1) Be helpful. Anything you can do for anyone. Get blankets, get gauze, run the specimens to the lab. Anything. Help wherever you can.
2) Introduce yourself to everyone. Doesn’t matter if it’s the scrub tech, cleaning people or doctor you met yesterday. Say “Hi, my name is Brian. I’m a PA student.” It’s really that simple.
3) If anyone asks if you’ve done something before and you haven’t, say “No, but I’d love a chance to do it. Can you show me how?” You should be trying everything now. Not saying you don’t know how.
4) Smile. I mean it. You want to be someone people want to be around. If people don’t want to be around you, they aren’t going to teach you to do anything
5) You don’t have to know everything, but knowing something is helpful. Everyone goes through it. You’re not going to have all the answers. But if you can get a couple of things right, you can quickly be a rock star.
Brian Wallace