we students would try to get in by 5am or so, have our notes in on the chart by 5:45am, and would leave by 7pm on average. we took one night of overnight call, but were given no post-call leave, meaning that we stayed a full day the next day. this translates into one 38 hour shift, which wouldn't have been so bad if that's how the team worked, except that the resident who was on call got to go home by noon. for some reason, the medical students (who are never given positions of consequence and are not allowed to do anything of importance) are required to stay an extra 7-8 hours after the resident.
the surgeries we saw were really amazing though. i saw about 4 brain surgeries, and at least that many cranial operations where they didn't actually operate on the brain. the technology used for these procedures is so advanced. the stereotactic imaging system really blew my mind, though. they place a frame on the patient's head and scan it all in an MRI machine. the computer then uses the frame to map out the patient's brain to certain reference points. then, in the OR, an enormous infrared camera/computer can match the MRI to the live patient, using a stereotactic probe. in other words, when the probe is held to a certain point on the patient's head in the OR, the computer displays what it looks like underneath using MRI technology. it's pretty amazing stuff.
tomorrow i start on ophthamology for a week. i'm looking forward to this mostly because the hours are so cush. 8:30am-4pm, plus lecture, which i am debating if i will attend. compared to this past week, i feel like i'm going to be on vacation.
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i added some pictures to flickr, from my trip to london last spring.
this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 11:55 PM |
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dude! all you can see is your head! tubb-free!
dropped by 
dr. j on 10 January, 2005 07:46 [*]
~$$$~
exactly, and now my head is half the size of the head in the picture...
dropped by ye ole vinegar soaked manacles of doom! on 10 January, 2005 09:22 [*]
~$$$~
drop some science: