Faire son internat de médecine aux Etats-Unis, c'est possible!

On to my next rotation: the MICU! Might be a little biased since this is what I want to do with my life, and undoubtedly my favorite rotation. The team structure is fairly similar to wards except there's no med students. Depending on the hospital we're at, we might have a Q4 or Q6 day off structure. I've only done one rotation so far but I don't expect my second one to be very different. My day usually starts around 5:00-30am (The world belong to those who wake up early!). I review night events, which are more frequent than in wards rotations, vitals, labs etc. prior to go see my patients. Teaching rounds start at 8am, ideally you have seen all your patients and written all your notes. On rounds, the post call team presents the overnight admissions and we all get some teaching from our wonderful ICU faculty. Then we go round on our patients with either our attending or the fellow. Meanwhile we attend urgent matters as they arise and we also answer codes in the hospi...

The goal of these articles are to depict what's the hospital system and the life of an intern/resident like in the US (more precisely in Dallas, at UTSW). I'll start with the wards (internal medicine) rotation at the Veterans hospital since this is the rotation I just finished. Like all our rotations, it lasts 4 weeks. Each team is made of one intern (= first year resident, that's me), one resident (2nd or 3rd year), 2 medical students and 1 attending. Each person has a specific role in the team: - The med students follow between 2 and 4 patients. They are the ones who will have most time to spend with them and get to know them. They alert us about anything concerning (for example, one of my former med students realized my patient was being abused at home and thanks to her we were able to gather resources to help her). They see their patients in the morning before rounds and present them on rounds. They're expected to have a broad differential about their patient...