Friday, April 18, 2008

AI

In keeping with this month's tradition of posts entitled with abreviations (with a grand total of 2 now), I give you AI.

Not artificial intelligence. That might actually be useful in medicine. Like really awesome PDA's. No, AI in medicine means "Acting Intern". That's what I am this month. I think it should also stand for "Absolutely Inept". Because that's how you feel when the nurses page you for something. Not because you don't know what to do all the time (that's only like half to 3/4's of the time). It's because even if you do know what to do, your answer can only be, "We should probably do xxxxx, but I can't give you an order. Let me talk to the resident and they'll take care of it."

As an acting intern, I'm supposed to be doing all the work that interns do. Except there's billing and medicolegal implications involved, so everything I do has to be duplicated anyway by a resident. So it makes me redundant. And out-of-the-loop when things happen and people go to where they can get orders instead of to me.

The nice thing, however, is that since my upper level resident has to duplicate everything I do she tends to not give me a lot to do. I only take up to 2 patients on call and tend to be last in line every time to get patients. That means if the service doesn't cap, I get only 1 patient on call. This is glorious because it frees up all sorts of time to do other important things. Like watch every single episode of Arrested Development.

The third year medical students on my team are all taking their internal medicine shelf exam this week. And they are all blaming me for their decreased study time because I told them about Hulu.

2 comments:

michelle said...

A.I is also a name of a indy pop punk electronica band that I so love...

I miss you and the fam!!

Dr.Jon said...

HEH! Except if you do your AI at LBJ with a Dr. NM. You will take 5 admissions per night, and you will carry 10-12 if you aren't getting them out. That said, thankfully, the ER there is pretty much inept, so you end up d/c'ing 3 of your 5 admissions at 8AM the next morning, but not before getting yelled at for taking the admission. Good times....good times..