Surgery Reflection

I rotated at NYPQ. I had a wonderful learning experience as I was exposed to many disease etiologies while rounding a variety of patients each morning and afternoon. Rounding and managing patients strengthened the clinical signs of diseases that we had learned about in the didactic year. Even though the hours were demanding, I loved Surgery and would be very open to working in this field in the future. NYPQ allowed me to see a surgical patient from the very beginning of treatment to discharge. Before starting this rotation, I hadn’t explored robotic assisted surgery, for example. I really really enjoyed seeing the anatomy in real-time on live patients.

My biggest issue in the beginning was learning and reinforcing what we’d learned about scrubbing into the OR. At first, I stumbled with the steps, but eventually, became very familiar with the process and scrubbed into the OR with ease. I was scared of the OR from “surgical horror stories of past students”, but found most surgeons and residents to be happy to teach students and explain procedures.

Later, my issue was presenting in an organized fashion. Honestly, I struggle with organization so I am happy to have the opportunity to better myself personally and professionally while working on this.

In writing and presenting H&Ps, I just get nervous, but this unfortunately has the impression that I did not practice or do not know my patient history and treatment plan. I will continue to work on public speaking and trust my presenting skills as we have more and more rotations.

One of my goals for this rotation was to better present in a SOAP note format. I think I did moderately well. I did make vast improvements from when I began the rotation, but I still will, at times, put objective findings in the assessment! I also need to study disease etiology a bit better so that I can better understand treatment and imaging modalities.

I had a great experience at NYPQ Surgical Dept. Honestly, before beginning my rotation, I was very scared that it may be a hostile environment, but I found that to be far from the truth. Everyone was open to teaching. Surgery was very informative for me as a visual and hands-on learner. I was extremely tired at times, but it was worth it.