This blog is going to be different from the rest, in this blog I will be talking about the other type of fieldwork that I have been working on my senior year. On March 22, 2019 I hosted my fundraiser for Boston Children’s Hospital. It was a very successful night, I had a free babysitting service at Oliver Ames High School (60 kids came!) and then parents would go to either Bertucci's, Stoneforge, or Township and then a portion of their bill will be donated to Boston Children's Hospital. The event was a big success, and I could not have been more proud. Over the course of this year I have continuously been trying to pull all the strings together to ensure a successful event. When I saw how many people had signed up for the event, I was very stressed because that was a lot of people relying on me to take care of their children and to make sure that they have fun. On top of that I felt like I needed 20 volunteers, and couldn't seem to get any. However, with all the stress and my expectation for everything to go wrong, everything actually went extremely smoothy and to be honest it kind of shocked me. During the event I was having fun, I was enjoying the event I had worked so hard to plan and while I was having scooter races with the kids, I would stop to myself and think of how I am enjoying my time and that I am not stressing about anything. The only thing that is bugging me is how I still don't know how much I raised because the restaurants need to calculate it all out. All there's left to do is give my final presentation and just like that, the year is over!
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During this mentoring session we were walking around and doing usual rounds. It was mostly sick kids that day because it was Sunday morning. We continued to do the usual, listen to the lungs and heart, then looking at the child's throat. Since it was sick season we were very much able to see the red beefy throats which indicated strep and usually is later confirmed with a strep test. However, while we were walking around a very interesting topic got brought up. One mother mentioned how she’ll just give child melatonin that night to help them go to bed. She continued to say that she actually does this almost every night. After this, my mentor and I got into a very interesting conversation about melatonin and the increased use of it. I realized that even all the children I babysit are given melatonin almost every night before they go to bed. Back then (before every child was given and IPad) kids had no issue going to sleep because they would play outside and release all their energy, making it easy for them to lie down and sleep. However, now kids are no longer dispensing there energy because all they do is sit in front of a screen. The screen increase the time it takes for the child to fall asleep. This got me thinking, imagine how it will it be in a few years, especially since kids are already struggling. Will everyone be taking sleeping pills? My mentor and I ended with the conclusion that screens are taking over and it needs to be stopped otherwise we all might be taking medicine to fall asleep.
Stethoscope-a medical instrument for listening to the action of someone's heart or breathing. This very simple piece of equipment that three years olds could very easily use, took me four shadowing visits to figure out. This is my explanation why, on my first shadowing visit I used my mentors stethoscope so all I had to do was put the earpieces into my ears and she did the rest. My mentor placed it on various parts of the child's body so I could hear the heartbeat of the lungs and the heart. I was very successfully able to do so only because she was placing it properly for me. Now the next time I came in to shadow, she gave me a stethoscope of my own so we could listen at the same time. However, this stethoscope was different, the larger side with the design was meant to lay against the skin, whereas on the other stethoscope I used in my previous visit, it was the opposite. When I was listening to patients I realized that I could barely hear the heartbeat, and as my genius self I came to the conclusion that this was because my stethoscope was mildly smaller than my mentors. False. On my third visit I had realized that I was no longer able to hear anything AT All and felt too awkward to ask while in the room with the patients, and since it was a very busy day I never got the chance to ask. There was a moment however, when my mentor realized that I had it wrong and she asked me if I could hear from the side I was laying on the skin (the side I couldn’t hear anything from) and for some bizarre reason I froze and said YES. I said that I was able to hear from the side that I could not hear from. I have absolutely no idea why I said that. On my fourth visit, my brain grew back and it was doing better than ever because I decided to flip the stethoscope and all of a sudden I could hear the heartbeat and the lungs! I can now leave you rest assured that I will never ever use a stethoscope wrong ever again. Thank goodness for this learning experience because otherwise I would have embarrassed myself in a much more important setting. But overall I think the most important thing I learned is that i should never feel ashamed to ask question, no matter what setting I am in.
On my fifth shadowing experience with my mentor, I walked into the office and I could tell it was going to be a busy day, even though it was Sunday morning. It was in fact flu season. However, before all this begun my mentor informed me that our first patient would be a three day old baby! I was ecstatic, I have a genuine love for babies, and the youngest I have seen so far during my experience was 8 days old, so I was very excited. As we were about to walk in my mentor looks at me said she was about to do something really funny. When she said that I smiled and nodded to be polite, but to be honest I was very confused. We walked and she began to introduce me as normal, “Hi this is Sandy Elias…” but then she says this, “She is a 3rd year Brown Med student coming into shadow, do you mind if she comes in?” I took a double take, a third year brown medical student??? I wish! She looked at me and whispered “funny...right!” I tried to hold my laugh in to not look suspicious in front of the patients but after my mentor finished the baby's check-up, we both walked out of the room and started laughing.
After that, the day began almost every patient who came in got a flu and strep test done and almost all patients were tested positive in at least either of them. The hardest thing throughout this process is to watch a child have a strep test taken. My mentor had to reach all the way back into the back of the child's throat and swipe it with a cotton swab. Every time she did this, the child would squirm out of their mothers bear hug in agony. One 12 year old even threw a punch at my mentor while she was taking his strep test, but least she got the swipe. After my mentor had just been punched she looked at me and goes, being a doctor is not just about making someone feel better, sometimes it is about taking a hit once in a while. That is something I will never forget and I will apply it to life, sometimes you will get hit, but as long as you get up you can keep on going. You’ll know you are a good doctor when you are able to make a child enjoy the doctor's office. Sounds crazy ? Believe me it's possible, I've seen it with my mentor Dr. Rachel Acker. As I’ve watched her interact with kids, I was able to see her many tricks and tips that allow her to check the ears and heart beat of kids without freaking them out. For example she lets the children check her ears for “bananas and strawberries” before she checks their ears. It's incredible to watch, especially with this one little boy, he is a three year old boy named Jake. When my mentor saw his name on the list she looked at me and very excitingly said, “ you’ll never believe it, this kid loves coming to the doctors” and surely enough right after that I saw the most adorable three year old boy running down the hall with the biggest smile on his face. When we walked in he screamed “HI DOCTOR” and immediately started asking my mentor if she was going to be checking his tummy. When she was checking his ears and throat, he also got to check my mentors ears and throat. When my mentor checked his lungs and pulse, he also got to pretend to check my mentors lungs and pulse. I’ve never seen a child sit through a doctor's visit with a smile on his face. After we were done and ready to leave, the little boy kept saying “more more” and he started whining because he didn’t want to leave, it was so cute. That is how I know that my mentor is truly a good doctor, she has made this child enjoy doctor visits and love coming back to the office.
Just to let all readers know, in this blog and in all future blogs I will be changing the names of all patients to protect their identity.
There are worried parents, nice parents, and plain mean ones (however I sympathize for the means ones because they are simply frustrated and only want the best for their child). During my first experience shadowing I would say I saw it all. Shelby and her parents were a family that I will not forget. Shelby is 8 months old and she was post viral meaning she was recovering from her recent virus. When Shelby came in, the first thing my mentor did was evaluate her by listening to her heart beat, her lungs, and by taking a look at her ears and eyes. What was really cool is that my mentor also let me listen to Shelby's heart beat, which was very fast. My mentor explained to me that a baby's heart has to beat almost two times faster than an adult because a baby has a smaller heart, so it takes many pumps to get the blood circulated throughout the whole body. Whereas for an adult our hearts are so big that one pump will get the blood to our whole body. It was very cool to be able to compare the heart beats of babies to toddlers, and then to kids. I was also able to listen to Shelby's lungs and while I didn’t really know what I was listening to, my mentor explained to me that the light scuffle sound allowed us to know that she was still congested but her lungs were clear. After this evaluation, Shelby was put on a breathing treatment to try and get her oxygen levels up, which worked! Shelby was then put on a plan to repeat the breathing treatment twice a day for the next three days and then come in next week to see her progress. While Shelby was having her breathing treatment done I got to hold her, getting to hold babies is definitely a perk of being a pediatrician, she was just so adorable! A doctor's office is mostly about helping patients but there are other things that go on, all the chit chat that comes after the patients leave was something that I got to listen in on. The night before Shelby came in, her mother had called in aggressively yelling at my mentor because she felt as if it was my mentors fault that her daughter was sick. The funny thing is the next day when Shelby came for her appointment she came with her dad not her mom, interesting huh? It's funny because there will always be chit chat everywhere you go, even in a doctors office! |