Melissa's Bio

Melissa's Diary

Today I had the opportunity to shadow an emergency medicine physician in Oklahoma City. Emergency medicine is on my short list of likely specialties, so when I got an email at school about this opportunity I jumped at it. I haven’t had much exposure to emergency medicine, so I’ve been eager to see if I actually enjoy it. I was assigned to follow a physician from 7 am-3 pm while he was on shift at one of the OKC hospitals. Because it was to begin so early, my family and I came down last night and made a weekend of it, spending part of the evening in Bricktown (an area with restaurants, etc) and visiting the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial. My daughter was chomping at the bit to go swimming at the hotel, so we did that as well.

My husband dropped me off at the hospital (they were going back to the hotel for breakfast and more swimming) and I went off to find my Dr for the day. The morning started slowly, with only one patient waiting (he’d been punched in the eye, cutting his eyelid badly), but things really picked up later. Here are the types of patients that came in while I was there: generic back pain (multiple cases, lots of narcotics-seekers), toothaches (didn’t expect to see them in the ER, but there were multiple ones), an assault victim (open skull fracture), a cut hand, a few colds/congestion/pneumonia, a motorcycle accident victim (refusing treatment for religious reasons), a child with a rash, a possible miscarriage, etc.

Now, as a first year student I don’t actually know how to do anything so much of the day was spent simply watching what was going on. The Dr I was with (and a couple of the others who passed through) was very nice about explaining things for me and pointing out interesting cases. I did get to take a preliminary history on one patient and tell another patient that his x-ray showed a fracture. I even got to clean the cut hand so that it could be stitched.

I absolutely loved my day in the ER! I liked the variety of patients, the pace of the day, the shift work aspect of the job. I went into the day knowing that even though I’ve been considering emergency, I might find that it really isn’t for me. I’m thrilled to find out that I can happily keep it on my short list, and I’m looking forward to setting up another day in the ER.

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*Some names have been changed.