Pre-operative Clinic

All of the medicine residents have continuity clinic, a residency-long outpatient clinic where they see a panel of general medicine patients; they act as the longterm primary care physician or family doc. But a handful of us doing an internship in internal medicine are actually going into other specialties such as dermatology, neurology, or radiation oncology. I am going into anesthesiology next year. So it doesn't make all that much sense for us to have a primary care clinic, and indeed, because we're only here for a year, it isn't fair to patients. So instead of a continuity clinic, all of us "preliminary" interns have clinic in our specialty.

I work in pre-operative clinic which I really enjoy. The pre-operative clinic sees a huge volume of patients and it is run mostly by nurse practitioners supervised by an MD. It allows us to talk to the patient about anesthesia and answer their questions as well as make an assessment of the patient's pre-operative risk. It's a really educational experience. Although at first I focused on learning which medications to continue or stop and what elements of the exam are relevant, I'm now getting a sense of what medical problems are pertinent and important, and indeed, what issues might lead us to cancel a surgery. The directors are outstanding teachers and working in this clinic gives me a better insight into what to look out for next year.