Today was my last day at my first hospital. Tomorrow is a didactic day at our main hospital where all the psych clerkship students come back from their sites to review for our "shelf" exam on Friday. I get the feeling that this year is just going to fly by.
I've said goodbye to hospital staff before, when I worked and volunteered in various capacities at hospitals prior to med school. It's always a little bittersweet, but no different from other jobs. One of the things I'll miss about this bunch is their (dark) humor. The unit was getting pretty busy with more admissions today and few discharges. Someone joked that we should look into discharging patients to nursing homes around the South Bronx because the Legionnaires disease outbreak there is probably opening up beds...
But today I said goodbye to my first patients. When patients leave the hospital, it's great! They're usually doing better and often grateful for the work that we (read: almost entirely other people) have done. Today was different because I was leaving and the patient's were staying. There was no closure. I was sad to say goodbye, but more so, I was sad that I had to leave before my patients had gotten better. In a way, I almost felt like I was abandoning them to their fate; apparently it doesn't matter to my brain that I'm abandoning them to being cared for nearly exactly as they were when I was working, by wonderfully talented professionals. Still, it felt weird.
MondayIL: A diagnosis of rapid-cycling bipolar disorder is made if a patient experiences four or more mood symptoms (major depression, mania, hypomania, or a mixed state) in one year.
TIL: Brugada syndrome is a rare genetic heart anomaly caused by altered sodium channels that, among other things, may kill you at any time and makes you a pain to take care of for inpatient psychiatric care.
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