Getting Orientated

Today was the "first day" of OB/Gyn. I thank my lucky karma I was assigned to the "cush" hospital, where we work shifts instead of taking q4 call at [county hospital], aka the baby factory. We had some lectures this morning (mostly good), a long lunch, and then a VERY informal intro session with the course coordinator, who mostly has her act together (which is a pleasant change). Then, we walked over to the hospital for a quick tour of L&D. Once we found the residents' lounge, the course coordinator left us at the mercy of the residents sitting there. They seemed mostly benign, although little phrases stuck out:

"I don't really mind which order you see the patients in the morning, I won't yell at you, but some of the residents really prefer you to be on a different pod than the one they're on. But if I walked by Pod 3, and the student was there, I wouldn't yell at you for that, I would just go on to the next pod." (Well, gee, thanks!)

"We don't mind you following us around. If one of us gets up to leave, you should get up too--then, if we're just going to the bathroom or something, we'll say, Hey, it's cool, sit down. But otherwise, you should follow us."

Following a quick run-down, the Chief resident showed up. The mood shifted a bit, and she started her own orientation. She reminds me of my Chief from trauma surgery: they don't take crap from NOBODY, you understand? NOBODY. I don't think badly of her, but god forbid I cross her in some way. She let loose pearls like these:

"Don't let the attendings catch you sitting in this room, it looks bad."

"If you have a patient on the board, go by and check on her, because if suddenly her monitor quits showing up she may have gone straight to the OR and you need to be there. Don't come ask me where she is--no, ma'am--you need to be telling US where she is."

"Don't ask us if you can do stuff. We'll TELL you when you can do stuff."

All of it definitely made me shake in my boots a bit. The whole point of today seemed to be "Find stuff to do, and it better be the RIGHT stuff to do, but you'd better find it all on your own, or we'll be PISSED." Don't see the private patients, don't see the high-risk patients, do the triage H&P's in 15 minutes or less, write all your SOAP notes by the time the residents round, and DO NOT TOUCH a pretermer! Whew.

I do still have some apprehension about this rotation, since it used to be my chosen career path. What if I like it? What if I hate it? What if I drop a baby? What if I'm the jerk on the cord and invert some poor lady's uterus? GAH!

Time to go try to sleep this off, since I'll be leaving at 0440 tomorrow in order to preround.