Week 7:
Change of Scenery

July 30, 2018

This week was all about career exploration. I sure do love learning about the doors open to me after a successful internship.

I discussed with my RA and Dr. De the requirements of being considered an author for our paper. Since I did all of the data collection and will be working closely with the paper, I should be an author. This is an amazing resume builder for medical school and graduate school applications and will help to get my name out there in the scientific community. After collecting the data and cleaning it up multiple times I consider myself an expert on my particular project, which will make writing the paper, and presenting, a piece of cake. The coolest part of my research thus far was being able to watch Dr. De perform a distal femoral extension osteotomy (the surgery my project is centered around). He even let me do the angle measurements for him to confirm the surgery was done correctly and let me take pictures for my presentation! I won’t post the picture here because they are a little graphic and I don’t want to violate any HIPPA laws but let me tell you it was a great experience!

The highlight of my week though was the change of scenery. At the beginning of my internship, I reached out to a trauma surgeon at the university hospital that does work with Children’s as well and this week was finally the week I got to shadow him. On Tuesday I went to trauma clinic where Dr. Stoneback saw 20 patients in four hours. Dr. Stoneback is the expert in the region for non-union (where the bone doesn’t grow back together) and mal-union (where the bone grows back deformed) trauma orthopedics. It was so amazing to watch him see and radiograph and know what needed to be done. He made sure to walk me through every patient and problem after we saw the patients. He was so helpful!

Thursday, I went back to the U for a 12-hour day of orthopedic trauma surgery. Dr. Stoneback has an amazing staff working with him which made me feel welcomed and right at home with them. I saw five different surgeries, and they were all so interesting. It was really awesome to see the difference between pediatric surgeries and adult surgeries. One difference is that pediatric surgeries tend to smell more due to the use of cauterization to prevent excess bleeding while adult surgeries you don’t want to create blood clots, so there’s more “free bleeding.” The environment at the U was definitely for easy going, and there was much more laughing. I loved being able to shadow Dr. Stoneback he was supportive throughout the whole experience and is one of my new idols.

This experience at the U made me eager to get to medical school. One of the reasons I wanted this internship was to get familiar with the campus and see if this was really where I wanted to be the rest of my life, and I think it is easy for me to say that I love it here and would not mind staying forever.

Shadowing all week meant I worked long hours which gave me a three-day weekend to head home and relax. I am ready to get back at it Monday!