Family Practice Clinic

I have been at the family practice clinic for 3 weeks now and I’m having a great time. Family Practice is pretty wonderful because unlike my experiences in the ER, here I’m treating the person AND their disease. What I mean is in my last rotation I saw a patient for maybe 30 minutes max and you get into the habit of talking about the disease more than the person. For example, “I just saw the ankle in room 8 and sent them off to xray and I’m going to pop in to check on this vaginal bleed before checking on those films.” It may sound impersonal and rude but in a busy ER the deal is you see a patient, take care of their life threatening issue, and then tell them to “follow up with your primary care doctor within a week.” Here in Family Practice, I spend that same 30 minutes but about ½ the time is spent catching up with the patient. I get to see how their job/kids/spouse/vacation is going and I end my appointment with “alright then, I look forward to seeing you in 2 weeks.” It’s been very rewarding and I find that I really enjoy the “people” side of medicine.

I feel really lucky also to be in this particular clinic. Not only do I only work Tues – Fri but my preceptor is a wonderful lady who has a great client base. She doesn’t do chronic pain patients and doesn’t treat workman’s comp either. So instead, the majority of the time I’m seeing solid, salt of the earth people who are more interested in getting well than in lying and manipulating me into prescribing them pain meds. It’s pretty refreshing. I have a lot of autonomy at this clinic and see approx 15-18 of my own patients per day. About 40% of the appointments are for pediatrics and well child checks so I get to ooooh and aaaah at all the adorable babies. I’ve even observed 2 circumcisions and the doctor just told me “alright, now that you’ve seen a couple, you’re doing the next one.” EEEK!