General Surgery Audition Season in Full Effect!

First day of general surgery audition selfie :-)

The grind doesn't stop, and I am currently in Oklahoma for the month on my first general surgery audition rotation. In case you're not familiar with this, auditions are where medical students go to residency programs they are interested in and "act" as a resident for four weeks. It helps give the programs an idea of who you are as an individual, how you work with and get along with the current residents, and it allows you to not only shine, but get a feel of a program to see if it is worth applying to. In the MD world, these are known as away rotations, but they don't tend to carry a lot of weight. In the DO world, auditions are a big deal (well, at least when it comes to surgery anyway). Some programs will not even grant interviews to students unless they have auditioned at their program, so I would say it's super important. I will pretty much be in a different state every month until December, and super busy, but I will try my best to keep everyone updated.

So far, I am really enjoying my experience. I started last Monday and it has literally been non-stop since orientation. I was so glad that I brought my gym shoes with me the first day because right after orientation I was throwing on scrubs and getting straight to work! I've only been here a week and a half, but have scrubbed in on everything from debridements to below knee amputations to laparascopic cholecystectomies and hernia repairs. This morning I even got to scrub in on a few plastic surgery cases :-) There is something new and exciting every day and I absolutely love it!

My typical day starts around 430am, and I get to the hospital around 5am to round on my patients, type my progress notes, and then meet up with the resident I am assigned to. From there we might round again, and then we usually head to the OR for the procedures scheduled that day. After surgery, we round again, go see new consults, and if we finish early, I go find other surgeons and ask if they need help with anything or if I can scrub in on their case. On Tuesday mornings before surgery, I attend Grand Rounds, and on Wednesday and Friday mornings at 6am, I attend didactics with all the residents and attendings. Thursdays are clinic days. At the program I am at right now, I am the only student auditioning in general surgery this month, so I am definitely taking advantage of this and trying to get in as much face time with the residents and attendings as possible. At around 530pm, if there are no new consults, then I go with the residents to do handoff to the night time residents, and I am pretty much free to go.  My evenings are filled with studying for the next day's cases and reading up on things I might have been questioned about earlier in the day. I also make sure to video chat with my daughter, which is always a great way to end the day. After that, if I don't have any conference calls or anything important to do, I either watch a quick show or read, shower, and then go to bed. This is pretty much how it goes every day, and that includes weekends and holidays. This weekend I have to fly out of town to handle some SNMA business, so I am kind of looking forward to being able to sleep in a for a couple of extra hours on Saturday, but kinda sad I might miss some surgery action.

With that being said, I haven't had much time to explore the area I am in because I literally go to the hospital and then my AirBnB location. Oklahoma is definitely way different from what I imagined, but in a good way, and both the weather and people are pretty great. I also ran into two of my classmates who are here auditioning for other specialties, so it was a pleasant surprise to see some familiar faces.

That's pretty much it on my end. The past month has been spent moving, transitioning, traveling, and dealing with a ton of changes, but luckily I adapt to change pretty well. Right now, my main focus is performing my best on this rotation and learning as much as I possibly can without getting in the way of the residents. I am also in the middle of applying to osteopathic residency programs and will be submitting applications in the next day or so. The next few months will probably be the busiest time of my entire medical school career, so please keep me in your prayers. I'll make sure to update everyone as I go, but if you don't hear from me, you know why. Until next time!