As I started my medical rotation internship from the Annie Ruth foundation, I was very hopeful to learn lots of new things and shadow under phenomenal doctors, and I was not disappointed over the four weeks that I did get to intern. One of the main purposes that I was looking to fulfill through the internship was to find what subspecialty of medicine I wanted to go into, and even brighter than that, I wanted to know if my choice to dove into the medical field was even a right one in the first place. The internship awakened my senses to some things that I did not know were possible, real, or a consequence of medical field professionals. The insight I learned while shadowing these doctors and having windows of time to ask them my own personal questions will be forever valuable to me and the connections that I made within the clinic were additional bonuses as well.
My internship experience started at Dr. Rizk’s office, an orthopedic surgeon who was practicing for few years at that point. Right off the bat, I realized he was very charismatic and very open and very extroverted to his patients, and he would radiate positive energy even if the patients had some difficult problems or joint pain or maybe even required surgery. This sheds some insight as to the type of beacon of hope that doctors are supposed to serve as and the expectations of a professional from the medical field. It also gave me a foundation for how patient and doctor relationships work and what is expected from either side, as well as what happens when someone does not deliver one side. The X-rays and medical knowledge that I was exposed to and got to learn about were very interesting, to say the least, and widened my perspective on how many fields there truly are in medicine and how much goes into protecting patients and the wellness of the community. One specific experience I remember vividly from Dr. Rizk’s office was when I assisted an old lady to get into the X-ray room and fastened in such a position so that a proper X-ray could be diligently performed. Although there were difficulties in doing so, such a positive attitude remained throughout, at least from the clinical side, and it influenced the people around, and obviously the patient herself. The X-rays allowed us to gain a better understanding of the patient’s pain and diagnose her with the proper terms.
My next rotation was with Dr. Greene, who is a cardiologist. As this was the specific specialty that I was thinking about heading into, I had lots of questions and a very eager passion to learn what the field was like, at least from a clinical perspective. Dr. Greene was very welcoming and charismatic, just like Dr. Rizk was, but had so much more experience and taught life lessons that extended beyond medicine. Some of my favorite experiences from that rotation included shadowing and echocardiogram, watching the nurses use the defibrillator machine to check patient data from the last few months just through the use of Bluetooth, and learning about the new technologies that have developed in the field of cardiology and are henceforth affecting the entire field of medicine. This rotation really gave me a sense of the future of medicine and the role that AI and technology will be playing in it.
All in all, my medical rotation experience gain from the Annie Ruth foundation has been very rewarding and taught me lots of new knowledge and skills that I would take with me moving forward. That has helped cement my decision to go into the field of medicine and pursue a career as a physician. Each physician may have a different specialty and may see different patients, there is a very clear similarity between physicians, and is not only limited to their vast amounts of knowledge, but their excellent social skills and ability to make a room feel at ease or happy despite unfortunate conditions that led them to go to that clinic in the 1st place. This gave me the sense that the medical field is very nuanced, and the skill sets that you need as well as the connections you need to make, and that is a very outgoing field with lots of expectations, both intellectually and socially. I got to experience the rewarding aspects of the career and some down sides, and I’m happy that I got to experience both sides of the spectrum.