A new year means new beginnings. For some people it might be a new job, a new school, a new home or a new focus. For me, 2021 brought an all too familiar change… a TDY rotation. If you are not familiar with “TDY” it stands for Temporary Duty Assignment, and it is when the … More New Kid in the OR
Hello again! As I’m coming up on the 3rd birthday of this blog (and a fresh new year is looming), I wanted to re commit myself to MilitaryDoc.com. As you may have noticed my posts have been few and far between for the past year and to be frank it is because life is busy … More 2020 Life Update
When I first started this blog, I was still bewildered about the thought of pursuing a surgical residency. Embarrassing as it may be, I would binge watch Grey’s Anatomy and dream of the day I could hold out my hand as silence falls on the operative suite and say “scalpel”. A life as a surgical … More A Day in the Life of a Surgical Resident
First things first plan to be in the operating room before the patient arrives. Introduce yourself to the circulating nurse who should have a desk/workspace in a corner of the operating room. Most operating rooms have a white board where they put all pertinent information for the “time out” prior to the case, where you … More OR Etiquette: Customs & Courtesies
One of the things that intimidated me the most about moving on to residency was the thought of taking “call.” Am I really expected to be awake and functional for 24+ hours in a row? How often will I have to be on call? Are there different types of call? Will I be able to … More Surviving Intern Year: Taking Call
I have wanted a dog for as long as I can remember. I grew up with dogs (Tessa a Gorden Setter and Shadow a Newfoundland/Black Lab Mix) when I lived in South Africa, however we had to give our dogs away when we emigrated when I was 6 years old. From the moment we landed … More Owning a Dog in Residency
“Life isn’t easy. We all have our good and bad days, we’ve all been through pain, physically and mentally. We’ve all thought at times that we couldn’t make it through something.” These are the words of Vanessa Cole, founder of Freedom Forged Co, a stamped jewelry company After a divorce left her with full custody … More Feature Friday: Freedom Forged
When I first moved down south to start my PGY1 year (post graduate year), I had matched into a preliminary internship meaning I had a 1 year contract. Where the base is situated, a lot of the apartments and housing developments are across a waterway meaning that it was a 20+ minute commute over several … More Moving on Base (For Dummies)
I still cringe thinking about the first time I went on base. I commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in Summer of 2014 before starting medical school and excitedly went to visit an Air National Guard Base to check out the uniforms and explore. I gave the military police a long story about how I just … More Visiting a Military Base (for Dummies)
There’s no doubt about it, medical school is stressful. There’s constant deadlines, pressure to succeed, an endless amount of information being thrown at you in a finite amount of time. All of this stress culminates on match day, the day medical students find out if and where they will complete their post graduate training. For … More I Matched as a Prelim… Now What?
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