Why don't medical students want to go into primary care? Why do even primary care residents want to get out, taking routes such as fellowships, hospitalists positions, academics, even nonclinical jobs?
Perhaps it has to do with the student's experience of primary care. It is incomplete. It is a series of office visits with patients you may never see again. You get to make a diagnosis, fill out a follow-up medication and move on to the next patient, normally never seeing that patient again.
Well, I am in primary care. I think I am beginning to understand the joy of primary care.
Last week, I injected a painful hip (trochanteric bursitis), removed a small pebble from a child's nostril, aspirated a ganglion cyst, met a patient cheerful after beginning an anti-depressant, celebrated a new addition to the family of a little girl I have cared for since residency and got an 87 year old to walk again after I took fluid off his knee and injected it with steroids. Of course, the 87-year old was back the next with an even more swollen knee (he felt so good after the first fluid removal that he went home and got on his treadmill to catch up with exercise after all this time of being immobile).
They say that if you've suffered through a traumatic experience together, like fought in a war alongside someone or being involved in a life-or-death encounter, you form a special bond with that person. Well, bonds are being formed all over the place.
Last week, I was a dermatologist, a cardiologist, a nephrologist, an orthopedist, an endocrinologist and a psychiatrist, sometimes all in the same day. I love it!
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1 comment:
It is so good to hear the joys you have in primary care!! And that there is hope for the crazies that actually WANT primary care
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