Onto the Valley

This last month, I've been on the general medicine wards at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. The Valley has its own residency program, but to broaden the experiences of both programs, we rotate down there and they send residents to Stanford and the VA. A lot of people don't like the Valley, but I really like it. As the county hospital in San Jose, it acts as the safety net for the uninsured, the immigrant population, the homeless, the indigent. The patients we see speak a myriad of languages, have a diversity of backgrounds, and come with both exotic and bread-and-butter illnesses. It is a really good change from the VA for me, and having been trained at UCSF, I feel a strong affinity for the underserved population. Indeed, the Valley reminds me strongly of SFGH. The way the hospital runs, the paper orders, the translators, the diseases, the autonomy all ring a sound chord within me and it makes me very happy to return to a county environment.