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Blog #8 - Final Reflection

Hey everyone!  I just wanted to start off this final reflection by thanking my mentors, Dr. Hoffer, Dr. Cha, Dr. Kaur, and Dr. Sangani (and Dr. Bencsath for day ten) for allowing me to follow them around the hospital and going out of their way to showcase a raw medical experience to a high school senior. The amount of support I received from the countless physicians and nurses I met along the way to pursue biology and medicine as an undergraduate next year was staggering. Looking back to my initial blog, I said that “the best way to discover if something is right for you is to try and experience it yourself,” referring to a potential pre-med path in college. I didn’t know any plans or schedules for the next few weeks when I wrote that comment. I assumed I would only be a “fly-on-the-wall,” lucky to view a procedure or patient visit exteriorly. Luckily, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Dr. Hoffer and Dr. Cha pulled me to their side during their operations. They allowed me to watch their
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Blog #7 - Witnessing Life and Loss on Days 13 and 14 with Dr. Kaur and Dr. Sangani

Day #13 : On my thirteenth day, I rounded with Dr. Kaur for the last time, experiencing a death early in the morning. When I entered Dr. Kaur’s office at 8:00 AM, she and her pharmacist talked on the phone about a patient on the fourth floor whose health was deteriorating rapidly. The patient was the 58-year-old man who requested to meet with hospice yesterday. We all rushed across the hallway and ran to the control desk on the fourth floor. 8:10, he was pronounced dead, and the exact time was marked in the Epic system to put on his death certificate. Dr. Kaur and I walked to a back room in the facility. She dialed his wife’s phone number and spoke to her briefly about the death, reassuring her that nurses were holding his hands until the last moment. How someone deals with death varies, and over a while of caring for a patient, the doctor begins to build a relationship with the individual, making it more challenging to watch them die. A takeaway I learned today is that you should be e
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Blog #6 - Shadowing a Hospitalist on Days 11 and 12

Day #11 : My eleventh day was my first-day shadowing hospital medicine. I was initially scheduled to observe Dr. Sangani for the next five days, but she is out of town until the 29th. So, I will shadow Dr. Kaur, another hospitalist, for the next three days. Today we went floor to floor visiting sick patients and their families. I pulled into Hillcrest's free parking tower at 7:50 AM and walked to the atrium. I took the stairs to the fourth floor and entered suite 400, across the hall from general surgery and Dr. Cha in suite 421. Dr. Kaur met me, and we walked to a back office. She introduced me to what she does as a hospitalist. Essentially, hospitalists are primary care doctors for patients recovering in the hospital. The main difference between primary care doctors (or surgeons like Dr. Hoffer and Dr. Cha) and hospitalists is that for PC doctors, the patients schedule to see their doctor, whereas a hospitalist schedules to see a patient in a rounding (room to room) fashion. Like
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Blog #5 - Gallbladder Removal and More on Day 9 & 10 of the OR

Day #9 : My ninth day was spent in the OR again where I watched Dr. Cha perform a gallbladder removal. After watching these surgeries in UH and the Clinic, it is making me a lot more appreciative of the work physicians and nurses do each day behind the scenes for our wellbeing. Today, I arrived at the Clinic OR at 7:00 AM. Dr. Cha walked me to the break area, where we grabbed masks, headgear, and safety glasses. Then we walked to a perioperative room to check in with the patient before the procedure. The patient stated they were nervous but were ready to start. Dr. Cha and the patient signed a consent form, and we left the room. About 10 minutes later, we made our way to OR 16. The patient was lying on a hospital bed with oxygen tubes and IVs hanging from their mouth and arms. Once everyone got to the room, Dr. Cha signaled that he was ready to start the cholecystectomy (gallbladder removal). The anesthesiologist talked to the patient to calm her down while they started pumping sleepy
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Blog #4 - Exploring General Surgery: From Clinical Visits to Gastric Bypasses

Day #6 : The sixth day was my first day at the Cleveland Clinic shadowing Dr. Walter Cha, a general surgeon who mainly performs gastric bypasses, hernia (abdominal tear) closures, and cholecystectomies (gallbladder removals). The sixth day was similar to day four (blog #3) with Dr. Hoffer, where Dr. Cha introduced general surgery and visited patients. I arrived at the Clinic's atrium around 7:30 AM. I met Dr. Walter Cha in his office and walked to a conference room. He explained the basics of his job as a general surgeon and asked me what my goals were for the week. He explained that today was his clinical day, meaning that, like on day four at UH, we would see patients in person. So, he opened the Epic (company) program on his computer and waited for a patient to arrive. First, his nurse practitioner called the patient from the waiting room, brought them to the weighing scale and height instrument, and took them to the room for initial questions. A green light on Dr. Cha's com
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Blog #3 - A Glimpse into Complex Neurosurgical Procedures and Patient Visits

Day #3 :   My third day shadowing Dr. Hoffer at UH was similar to the second day, but instead of two short surgeries, I observed a longer one. I met Dr. Hoffer again at 7:00 AM, and we walked to the changing room to change into scrubs. The first procedure I went to in OR 26 was interesting: removing a tumor around the pituitary gland. The ENT surgeon stuck a few metal rods up the patient's nose to accomplish this task. One of the rods had a camera (to be honest, I expected better resolution from a machine that probably costs more than a nice-sized house), which connected to a large screen. The second rod had various tools, like a plier, a grinder (which looked like a miniature disco ball), and a knife. In unison, the tools, visualized by the camera, cut through each sinus wall until they reached the sphenoid bone in the skull. Then, they used a sharp plier to open the bone and pop the tumor sack, releasing the pressurized greenish-yellow tumor from the pituitary gland. After the ar
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Blog #2 - Day 1 in the Neuro ICU and Day 2 in the OR

Day #1 : For the majority of the day #1, Dr. Hoffer and I planned out the week, toured the neurology department, and I spent time with neuro ICU rotation staff visiting patients in their rooms. Every day, I kept a journal of my events. Unfortunately, taking photos are generally frowned upon in a hospital, so most of the photos are from Google.  Today I arrived at the UH Bolwell building at 7:30 and signed in through the volunteer kiosk. I met Dr. Hoffer in the neurology lobby and walked to his office together. He explained what his job was generally about and asked about my goals for the week. He explained that a significant OR (operating room) case was canceled that day because of some insurance mess-up. Still, he had already postponed his other patients until a different date. So, he brought me to the neuro ICU (intensive care unit), where I met some doctors/fellows/other shadows. We started in a small room with about ten different doctors. A lead doctor arrived and asked for a one t
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