Clinical Interlude I

Clinical Interlude is a nifty three-day event that happens right before winter break. In order to introduce us to hospital in-patient medicine, the school assigns the first-year students to different ward teams at UCSF affiliated hospitals. This allows us to gain a context for the material we're learning in the classroom. We also get to practice our patient-doctor skills by taking a medical history and doing a physical examination on a patient. We observe team dynamics within the hospital and interact with non-physician members of the health care team. Perhaps most importantly, we acquire some stories about being in a hospital to bring home to our families for winter break.

I was assigned to Med Team G at Moffitt (the main UCSF teaching hospital). Other students were assigned to disciplines as diverse as emergency medicine and psychiatry to neonatal ICU and labor and delivery. I loved being on the medicine team. It was a lot of fun, and I did not feel completely bewildered. I tagged along with a third-year student who was great.

I was most surprised by how easily I was integrated into the team. I felt that I was considered a member, if only for a short while, rather than an outsider observing the dynamics of the medicine service. For example, I was encouraged and perhaps even expected to contribute to the intellectual discussion of the issues facing our patients. This was a lot less intimidating than I expected. I didn’t feel bad or ashamed to say I did not know anything about the subject. The team was delighted when I would say something, and then they would politely correct whatever egregious mistake I had just made.