MedEx Day 5/6 - May 23, 2022

Today, I shadowed the Pediatrics team at Prisma's Greenville Memorial Hospital. The experience consisted of rounding with the attending physician and three residents while visiting their 12 patients. We had multiple encounters with babies (mostly 4 months or younger) who had been having seizures. I learned about how to tell if a baby was having a seizure. I had never really thought about this but learned that babies have abnormal breathing and heart rates when they are having a seizure (due to the brainstem being the only part of the brain that is fully developed). One of our visits stood out among the rest because the MRI and clinical examination were leading the team to believe that the baby might be at an increased risk for developing cerebral palsy. The team deliberated whether to tell the parents about this increased risk yet. It was interesting to see how they considered the mother's current state and decided to wait to bring the news later/ more gently. I greatly enjoyed observing this interaction.

Another big takeaway from the experience was how well the Pediatrics' residents and the attending did at "getting to the level" of the patient. At times this looked like sitting down with the patient and looking them in the eyes and at other times this looked like playing games with the younger patients, so that they would cooperate with the physical exam. The residents/ attending were SO good at putting the patients at ease.

Overall, my favorite part of the experience was watching the coordination that pediatrics has to have with so many specialties. The team stopped to talk to the nurses, other physicians, and sent pages to other teams who were caring for each of the patients. I was enthralled by seeing this collaborative effort for each patient.

Last Friday (Day 5) got canceled due to a Covid outbreak within Tier IV.