MedEx Day 9 - July 9, 2021

Today was the end of the 2nd week of MedEx Tier III and my second of four clinical days. Today, I shadowed the Family Medicine Teaching Team at Greenville Memorial Hospital. While there, I was able to round with the team on 4 different patients, including a premature baby, a diabetic ketoacidotic patient, and a patient who had cellulitis in several different parts of their body. I enjoyed getting to see the interaction between the attending physician and the residents during their morning meeting/ overview of all the patients that were in their care. The residents presented all of the cases, while the physicians made comments/ talked about the plan of care. I kept thinking about myself presenting cases to my attending physicians when I become a resident.

My favorite parts of my shadowing experience were getting to see how the residents/ attending physician were so good with the premature baby/ her mother. They made sure to answer all of the mother's questions and spent extra time to make sure the baby was okay/ did extra tests. A memory I will never forget was with the type I diabetic patient who was in ketoacidosis. This patient was actively vomiting blood and had been for a few days. She was normally on a regimen of long and short-acting insulin; however, she had run out of her long-acting insulin and had been unable to afford more/ access more, causing her to try to self-medicate using only short-acting insulin more frequently. Unfortunately, her self-medication did not work, and she was admitted into the hospital with extremely high blood sugars. The most interesting part of this interaction was just the realization of how this patient's socioeconomic status determined that she was ineligible to have an insulin pump, like many Type I diabetics, and she instead had to self-manage her diabetes. Her socioeconomic status had a huge impact on her/ her medical treatment. Obviously, I have heard about this in theory but to actually see this play out in front of my eyes was very different/ very sad to see.