Family Medicne

When the last intern who'd been on the Family Medicine service signed out to me on Friday, he said, "Look for the list (on the computerized medical record). You're the blue team. You want the list where "blue" is spelled right but "medicine" is spelled wrong. There's also a list where "blue" is misspelled but "medicine" is spelled right - that's the wrong list."

Uhhhhhh-huh.

Today was my first day on the "blu" team. I'm there for two months. It was an interesting first day. Primarily because I've been dreading this rotation. The interns that have done it already this year had a really rough time of it. Typically, there are two interns assigned to family medicine - one who takes call every fourth night with the family service (which, incidentally, is the busiest group in the whole hospital. They admit more patients than the general medicine service. I think that's weird, but probably because I came from a hospital where family practice didn't admit at all), while the other works at Big Hospital during the week and takes Medicine call every Saturday at State Hospital. But, you know, for the past few months we've been a bit short staffed, so there's only been one psych intern on the Family team. So they essentially did the work of two people. While being up for 30+ hours ever fourth night. Good times. Needless to say, the four interns who've been on over the past six months have had some frightening stories to report. You know, stuff that was kind of like the intrinsic problems at my old residency - uneven responsibilities, work hours violations, a lot of dumping on people (the systematic issues, not the let's-beat-on-Kate type problems).

But, I've got a co-intern. Whom we'll call Mike. So, Mike and I split the patients. Which makes it a whole lot better. Especially considering that I've already got to get up at 5 just to get to the hospital in time to round on 4 or 5 patients, so if I had to round on 9 or 10, I might as well just move in.

I don't think it's going to be as bad as I was anticipating. Nonetheless, it was an interesting day. I'm...okay, I admit it, I hold what's probably an unfair bias against family practitioners. It's not a particularly competitive specialty. There are a lot of foreign medical grads that tend to fill up the residency spots, and a lot of US medical grads who don't match or can't get into more competitive residencies. And while the ideal is that they have a broad base of knowledge to treat patients from birth to death and at every stage in between. But the stigma is, they're a jack of all trades and a master of none, who have a shallow knowledge base and have to refer all the interesting stuff out. Which....you know, there are also a lot of family practitioners who fit the ideal. I have several very good friends who went into family because they had altruistic notions of life-long patient rapport, who have a wide-ranging base of knowledge, who enjoy the diversity of care. But I also have one or two classmates who are FPs now to whom I wouldn't send my neighbor's cat. And one in particular who admitted he was going into Family because he was - his word - lazy. Anyway, the point being....I need to get over that. We've got some really sick patients on the service. And like I said, they're the busiest service in the hospital. So they've got to know something. And they can't all be the wacky, scattered granola people of their reputation.

Although, my senior resident did hug me as I was leaving today....::sigh:: It's gonna be a weird month.