Gonna feel like a doctor this semester....

Now I know what it feels like to be a doctor.. and I do love the feeling actually. Woke up at 6.30 this morning to get to my clinic placement at Clarian Arnett Hospital by 8am this morning. My first day with two other graduate clinicians was a-mazing. I loved it. And I learned a lot. Aside from how tired I was due to serious lack of sleep last night, I still managed to learn so much and keep focused.

The three of us graduate clinicians trailed behind our clinical supervisor who's a Swallowing/Dysphagia specialist all the way till 12.30pm. We looked up patients' medical history, reason for a swallowing assessment, then made rounds to in-house patients. Squirting sanitizer into our hands everytime we walk in and out of a patient's room. Watched our supervisor do an oral mec exam on patients, count and time consistencies of swallowing of food, figure out diet consistencies for the patients... We even managed to observe an outpatient barium swallow. We had to wear lead protective clothing and watched live on an xray, the swallowing patterns of the patient. We had to observe for presence of aspiration and residue or any abnormal swallowing patterns. I loved it! Haven't had a swallowing class, so was pretty much clueless on the anatomy part of it the whole time, but I learned so much in four and a half hours!

It really felt like we were student doctors on Grey's Anatomy or something.. Who trail after the doctor in charge, with clipboards in their hands, desperately flipping through forms to fill up, desperately writing every word of the doctor's commentary about the patient, trying to answer related questions whenever asked to, at the same time awkwardly standing by the bed of the patient trying but failing to seem inconspicuous, non-intrusive and non-curious. Of course, my experience is probably waay less stressful than that of a real medical student... but nonetheless, it was pretty substantial.

Did I also mention that we wore lab coats, with our own name tags? With a clipboard, a black pen and a pen light each?

It's only 4.41pm and I'm already so tired. With my clinic demands this semester, I am going to have to develop that dreaded "sleep early, wake up early" habit that I used to have as a young kid in school that I left behind after I grew up... the habit that my parents always wished I still had. Gah! I'm going to have to be a morning person from now on!