Transition from medical school to residency during the COVID-19 pandemic

Black Lives Matter

These last few months have been absolutely insane for our country (and world). These shaking events include the worsening impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the protests that have arisen in response to racial injustice and police brutality in our nation. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Avery, and the death of many other African-Americans has incited rage and anger across the US, especially among communities of color. It is absolutely infuriating that we are still fighting racism and social injustice in the year 2020. It is sickening. These issues have stirred up immense frustration and anger within myself, because I cannot stop imagining that each of the black individuals who died unjustly at the hands of a policeman could have been one of my own family members.

Why are we not more actively working to address the underlying issues that have stirred up fury and violence in the streets to begin with? We need to take the time to listen to each other, especially to communities of color because our voices have been suppressed for much too long. We cannot have peace or begin to work towards a solution to the chaos until we acknowledge why the black community is outraged.

An anticlimactic end to medical school

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended everything. My medical school pulled us from our clinical rotations in mid-March, and we finished up the rest of the semester virtually. Everything was canceled, including Match Day, graduation, weddings, meetings, flights, conferences, everything. I had many travel plans for the spring, but unfortunately, they were all canceled.

I took advantage of our extra available time to work and earn some money to help finance my move to North Carolina. I started working for Renewal Care Partners, an organization that provides home health and companion care services in the Chicago and New York City areas. Their services were considered essential when the shelter-in-place orders were instituted, so I was able to work multiple shifts per week for about three months while finishing up my final rotation of medical school and preparing to transition to residency. I was paired with a client with Alzheimer's Disease who needed daily assistance with routine day-to-day activities. Her husband took care of her but needed some help during the quarantine with the daily activities (i.e. dressing, bathing, cooking, cleaning, etc). 

Photo from here

I wouldn't have traded the experience of working with Renewal Care Partners for three months at the end of my medical school career for anything in the world. During medical school, we learn everything about diseases: how they manifest, what can cause them, how to treat them, how to prevent them, etc. We also learn to listen to and educate patients empathetically about these same diseases. However, we are never fully exposed to the real-life challenges that patients face within their own homes while they are ill (or as a result of their illness). As a Care Partner, I worked directly in the home of our client and her husband, completing different tasks throughout my shift such as laundry, cooking, cleaning, bathing my client, feeding their cat, and running errands. This job gave me a unique, intimate view of the challenges that my client and her husband faced on a daily basis; this is something that I otherwise would have never gotten the opportunity to experience, and it has been absolutely invaluable. 

The next time I am on a medical team that takes care of a patient who has just suffered a stroke, for example, I need to challenge myself to constantly think about how this brain injury can possibly leave the patient seriously disabled. Who will take care of him when he leaves the hospital? Will he be able to make it to all of his physical therapy sessions? Does he need help with activities of daily living? Since medical school, I remember hoping and praying that I do not become a burned-out, bitter, and beaten down resident doctor whose main care in the world is to simply get through the day and turn patients over to another supervising medical team. One of the main reasons why I went into medicine was because it is a deeply humanistic profession. I am not doing my job as a doctor if I am not giving my all to my patients and serving them as compassionately and empathetically as I can.

Residency

Photo from here

I left Chicago at the end of May and drove to my sister's in Maryland. It was a 10-hour-drive, and surprisingly it wasn't all that terrible. I'd stuffed all of my belongings into my small Mazda Mazda2 sport (well, not all of them; I had to donate and throw away a bunch of stuff). I did all of the moving on my own. It was exhausting, but I saved hundreds if not thousands of dollars that I otherwise would've spent on movers and a truck. I spent most of the way listening to the Dr. Death podcast. I was engrossed in the series. I stayed with my sister in Maryland for a couple of weeks before heading down to North Carolina to get settled in. My family came with me to help me move my things in.

I'm still in slight disbelief that I will be at Duke for the next four years. I am a Neurology preliminary intern this year, and will be working alongside the Internal Medicine interns. They are quite a diverse cohort, which is fantastic. As for the Neurology preliminary interns, all 7 of us are women. We are Duke's first-ever all-female cohort of Neurology residents. 

I officially start residency in a few days, and I am a mix of anxious, excited, nervous, and a little apprehensive. I have not formally taken care of a patient since January during my Infectious Disease elective. So it's been about five months. That is crazy to think about. In February I was in Ecuador assisting in a Neurology outpatient and inpatient service, and for the first two weeks of March I was on an Ophthalmology elective, which was essentially shadowing. After that, we were pulled from our clinical activities. It's been a while since I've formally taken care of a patient, but I'm confident that I'll be able to get back into it okay. Hoping to emerge from my first day unscathed. Fingers crossed. Updates to follow.

Thank you for reading!