A year of clerkship

I just wrote my paediatrics exam. It is the final exam of my clerkship.

Officially, the medical school has done all the clinical teaching that it's going to do.

I remember starting my first day of clerkship in January. It was in internal medicine. I was absolutely lost on the ward. Lost in a sea of procedures, dictations, charts, notes, exams, lectures. I was given my first patients that afternoon. I spent a good part of that same afternoon doing an in depth neurological examination on someone with pneumonia.

Later on that month, one of my patients died suddenly from a massive stroke. I used to perch on the corner of her bed and we'd have nice little chats. She was quite a peach to put up with my daily questions regarding her bowel movements. It is easy to take the privileges granted to medical students for granted.

What happens in a year of clerkship?

I've lived in five cities (Hamilton, Vancouver, Grimsby, Brantford, Toronto).

I've cared for kids with strokes, adults with strokes, middle-aged blokes, wheelchair-bound grannies, pregnant ladies, premature babies and everything in between.

I've lost two bicycles, two stethoscopes, and a pager.

I've auscultated, poked, percussed, palpated, sutured, stapled and listened, listened, listened.

I've rollerbladed to the hospital, to the library, to play soccer, to the grocery store and back again.

I've slept little and ate less. I've studied more and known less.

It's an odd year. I've come so far, but am daunted by how far remains to be travelled.