For my ER rotation, I was at Brookdale Hospital, which at first I was overwhelm for how busy this ER was. However, this rotation was by far the most enjoyable and I was exposed to many techniques and treatment strategies.

I would have a new attending and resident for every shift; every attending had their way of teaching and I had the most exposure to techniques and treatments in this rotation than in any other ones. I did an endotracheal intubation, which was the most exciting skill because I only tried it on the Simman during clinical skill course. The attending had a glidescope to confirm that it was position in the right place, and I also auscultated in the patient’s chest and stomach.

I enjoyed all kinds of procedure I was offered to do including suturing, assisting in reduction of dislocations and fractures, blood draws, ABGs, CPRs, venous access, etc. Even doing things that was not in my procedure booklet was exciting such as filling out the airway management box, in this case I got to learn the names of each instrument.

The attending would also ask me questions about my patients’ treatments and for every answer there were more questions like why I would do that. One example was about a patient with a-fib uncompliant with her meds, how should I treat her and why? My choice was to give her calcium channel blocker, rate control but I was not sure why? They explained to me that right now she is symptomatic but otherwise stable, so rate control would be best but we should be watching her for signs of bradycardia.

In this rotation, I dealt with death many times, I had about 20 CPR during my rotation and unfortunately none of them survived, I would always help the PCRs to bag the deceased, but the hardest part was always the patient’s family. Although I never cried in this rotation, I was able to feel their pain and I would start reflecting about philosophical or existential questions and how life is short.

One of the most memorable experience was a patient with acute cholecystitis, I followed this patient’s progression until the surgeon came. During this time, my attending taught me the key points of diagnosing cholecystitis using the ultrasound. Then after 3 hours we had another similar case and the attending asked me the same questions, and it really helped me retain the concepts. Another attending let me do the FAST exam, which it was way harder than what the books or YouTube explain; the hardest part was to assess the left upper quadrant in terms of identifying the spleen, or the left kidney.

For my next rotation, my plan is to know anatomy since I will have surgery. Practice more on my presentations (such as adding more pertinent positive and negative) since I had some criticism on each presentation I had. I plan on reading the Surgical Recall book for this rotation.

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