"Ambulatory" "Medicine"

This month I'm on a 4th year required core rotation - ambulatory medicine. Essentially what that means is I'm supposed to be at just a regular run of the mill internal medicine clinic. Not in the hospital.

So I entitled this post the way I did because of what I'm actually doing. "Medicine" because it's actually more like "interventional cardiology". The attending I'm working with is a cardiologist, and a pretty well respected one at that. My friends are all treating diabetes and hypertension and "chronic pain" and whatever else it is regular doctors do. I'm seeing people who have all sorts of crazy messed up heart disease. SVT of pregnancy, s/p quintuple CABG (coronary artery bypass graft, or "cabbage" as we lovingly call them for short), or nectrotic foot ulcer limb slavage (necrotic = dead tissue). It's also interesting considering the number of health care professionals we see and treat. Nothings stranger than doing a history and physical exam on a patient who also happens to be a doctor at the school you attend.

"Ambulatory" because >50% of this month we're actually in the hospital and not in clinic. We have clinic two mornings and two afternoons a week. The other 3 days worth of time is actually hospital time. We round on patients in the CVIMU, CCU, and CVICU. We do lots of endovascular procedures in the cardiac cath lab. I think I've been wearing lead in the cath lab more time this month than I've spent in the clinic. Procedures after all is where the money in medicine is.

Oh yeah, and I think on average I'm working 3 days a week for the whole month. 4th year is everything I dreamed and more.