Infectious Disease

I had a great time on my ID rotation. The teaching was outstanding; the fellow, attending, or pharmacist would give us daily lectures, and I really got a good grasp of antibiotics, common hospital infections, and HIV. The flexibility of a consult service allowed me to read and learn independently. I was able to see a diverse set of patients with both diagnostic and therapeutic problems. Furthermore, as consults, patients were generally very interesting and complex, from the orthopedic to gynecology to surgery to medicine services.

Infectious disease is very interesting to me; there's a lot of good bread and butter, and then there's all the trivia (birds associated with psittacosis, vibrio vulnificans associated with oysters) that aren't too practical but fun to know. That fits my personality pretty well. You aren't restricted to one organ system, and you have to know a lot of medicine. But really, the key is knowing the antibiotics; I found the ID pharmacist to be invaluable. I'm glad I did the month long rotation; I really enjoyed it.