3rd Year Internal Medicine Resources
Today was the first day of 3rd year for me! I was so so incredibly nervous, but it went well! The set up for my team is the following: Attending (rotates every two weeks), resident, two interns, sub-internship 4th year student, and 2 medical students. The great thing about internal medicine is that the residents and attendings are so eager to teach. It is the basis of medicine after all! Knowing that made it a much more comfortable environment for expressing my curiosity and feeling like it was okay that I didn't always know the answer. In fact, they told us they don't expect us to know much of anything, which is awesome lol.
Let me provide a few tips before jumping into the resources:
1. Introduce yourself to the entire team and staff and always be courteous. The former is pretty obvious, but some people honestly ignore the staff in the hospital. They are people too that also deserve respect and acknowledgement. A good morning and a smile goes a long way.
2. Ask the resident you are working with what their expectations are for you on this rotation. Now, the school has requirements that you must fulfill to complete the clerkship. The resident will clarify the when, what, and where for the logistics of your rotation. So be upfront and ask. It also shows that you are there and eager to learn.
3. Ask the 4th year about the ins and outs. They've done a whole year of this, so they're experts (at least in my eyes). They can tell you where anything is, what certain attendings like, and more logistics. They will also tell you the best resources for that rotation. Today, the 4th year on my team sat down with me and the other medical student to explain what a SOAP (subjective, objective, assessment, and plan) note is and how to present it. It was super duper helpful since I'll have to gather one on my own on Wednesday and present at table rounds.
4. Be prepared to be pimped. Pimping is where the attending or resident will ask you questions about a topic. I kid you not, as soon as we walked out of the first patient's room today, the attending immediately started pimping us. Some people may be mean with the pimping, but a lot are not. It's a means of learning. I'm generally an extremely quiet person. Sometimes I know the answer, but I doubt myself and never speak up. I like this method of forcing me to gain confidence and actually speak. If they ask you a question and you get it wrong, they will explain the correct answer. And I HIGHLY suggest you further solidify that information when you get off otherwise it looks bad if you get that question wrong again.
5. Remember, this is a team. Never leave your fellow med students out to dry. If they ran to the bathroom and your team is somewhere else, send them a text of where you are. Working together makes the learning much more enjoyable and cohesive.
6. Cardinal rule: Never, and I mean never, ask a nurse for anything while they are doing shift changes. At our hospitals, they do them between 7-7:30 am. So if you want to check what happened with a patient overnight, come earlier. If you bother them during that time, they will give you the meanest death stare they can muster.
6. Cardinal rule: Never, and I mean never, ask a nurse for anything while they are doing shift changes. At our hospitals, they do them between 7-7:30 am. So if you want to check what happened with a patient overnight, come earlier. If you bother them during that time, they will give you the meanest death stare they can muster.
And that's all the tips I have for now with the rotation! Onto resources. The essential resources are underlined, italicized, and bolded:
1. Medical Basics Progress Note + H&P. I love this notebook. What it does is provide an amazing format for you to gather a history and physical exam from a patient. It's incredibly organized. In addition, it provides a page of 4 boxes for you to put in your SOAP notes. This is where you check in with the patient each day and gather the necessary information to present on rounds that day. Here's the one I got.
2. Pocket Medicine: The Massachusetts General Hospital Handbook of Internal Medicine. It basically has shorthand information on so many diseases and conditions. Here's the one I got. Try to find the bound one though, not the loose leaf.
3. Uworld Step 2 CK. This is insanely integral for studying for the shelf exam. Even my clerkship director admitted that we must do this for our shelf. Every student wrote they used Uworld on their eval. So do Uworld. Overall, there are 2,000 questions, and 1,300 of them are IM questions. For an 8 week IM block, if you do 25 questions a day, you can knock out all 1300.
4. WhiteCoat Clipboard - Medical Edition. This is the cutest thing. It's a clipboard that folds up and fits in your white coat. Even better, it has labs and important information for quick reference. It comes in a variety of colors. Here's a link to all of them. I got mine in the color lilac (as seen in the above photo).
5. Emma Holliday. This. Resource. Is. Every. TING. It is a series of videos from a then 4th year medical student where she summarizes the important high yield information for each rotation for the shelf exams in just two hours. Both attendings and students have mentioned this to me twice. I checked it out and WOW. So worth the time. To locate the videos, google search "Emma Holliday" + the rotation one you are searching for. So an example is "Emma Holliday Internal Medicine."
6. UpToDate. The ultimate online resource for anything and everything. Syndromes, treatment, ddx, background information. Anything. Just be cognizant that for citations in your assessment and plan, try to use primary articles, not UpToDate.
7. OnlineMedEd. I need to explore this one a bit more, but my roommate (who starts on psych) loves this one already. It's another online resource with videos on many topics.
2. Pocket Medicine: The Massachusetts General Hospital Handbook of Internal Medicine. It basically has shorthand information on so many diseases and conditions. Here's the one I got. Try to find the bound one though, not the loose leaf.
3. Uworld Step 2 CK. This is insanely integral for studying for the shelf exam. Even my clerkship director admitted that we must do this for our shelf. Every student wrote they used Uworld on their eval. So do Uworld. Overall, there are 2,000 questions, and 1,300 of them are IM questions. For an 8 week IM block, if you do 25 questions a day, you can knock out all 1300.
4. WhiteCoat Clipboard - Medical Edition. This is the cutest thing. It's a clipboard that folds up and fits in your white coat. Even better, it has labs and important information for quick reference. It comes in a variety of colors. Here's a link to all of them. I got mine in the color lilac (as seen in the above photo).
5. Emma Holliday. This. Resource. Is. Every. TING. It is a series of videos from a then 4th year medical student where she summarizes the important high yield information for each rotation for the shelf exams in just two hours. Both attendings and students have mentioned this to me twice. I checked it out and WOW. So worth the time. To locate the videos, google search "Emma Holliday" + the rotation one you are searching for. So an example is "Emma Holliday Internal Medicine."
6. UpToDate. The ultimate online resource for anything and everything. Syndromes, treatment, ddx, background information. Anything. Just be cognizant that for citations in your assessment and plan, try to use primary articles, not UpToDate.
7. OnlineMedEd. I need to explore this one a bit more, but my roommate (who starts on psych) loves this one already. It's another online resource with videos on many topics.
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