Surgery

I am currently on an eight week surgery rotation at Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno. The hospital is the only Level 1 Trauma Center between Los Angeles and the Bay Area, and it has a huge catchment area. It's busy and it's brutal. We spend four weeks on the elective surgery service which treats hernias, gallbladder diseases, and colorectal diseases; two weeks on trauma; and two weeks on burns and plastic surgery. The patient population here is diverse; Fresno has one of the largest Hmong populations in the U.S.

Orientation was ridiculous. We had a full day of lecture and anatomy lab (8-5pm) after which we had to drive 200 miles from San Francisco to Fresno so that we could arrive here ready for orientation at 8am the following morning. I realized how much I have forgotten about the abdomen and anatomy. It will be a daunting rotation.

Image is in the public domain. "A thoracic surgeon performs a mitral valve replacement at the Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center," taken from Wikipedia, originally from the Department of Defense.