When we make mistakes people DIE

orientation is the start of my clinical medical education, and the theme of the day is Don't Screw Up, or people DIE. So just in case you were not aware, we are dealing with life or death, and sometimes sick people die, and sometimes they die because we made a mistake. I think they mentioned this about 15 times that day, full of stories illustrating the point. My advice to the public, stay out of hospitals in the month of July if you can, because sometimes we make mistakes and people die.

Some other highlights from orientation, we learned about an awesome website: http://exclusions.oig.hhs.giv/search.aspx on this site you can type in a name and find out if they are allowed to work. You should try it, it will tell you why they are not allowed to practice, the type of professional they are, state in which they practice and a whole lot of interesting information that is considered to be public record. Go ahead and check it out... type in your name, or your friends name or even your doctors name if you have the chutzpa.

First order of business on the day of orientation is the ID Badge. I will try and take a picture and upload because its pretty amusing. The ID tag is bright neon green, with STUDENT written in huge letters across the middle. basically the badge says, " i don't know anything, so don't ask me."

The next piece of business is the infamous lecture schedule, as students we are required to attend lectures to enhance our clinical education with some added clinically based lectured material, case reviews and case presentations. During the explanation of how we are supposed to attend these lectures confused me so bad, and even after clarification i am still thoroughly confused. here is what we were told...
- you must attend 2 lectures a week
- there is a required Friday lecture every other Friday
- there are also 2 other required lectures, cardiology on wed morning at 7:30am, and tumor board on Fri morning at 7am
- as long as you attend at least one required lecture a week the other lecture can be any lecture from the schedule

i hope that schedule is as "clear as mud!"

The afternoon portion of orientation consisted of lectures and some more lectures....but one of the women who taught us a review of EKG's, but for some reason she seemed as though she was totally High... she kept stumbling into the screen, not making eye contact or just making weird expressions, having her eyes partially closed....all in all amusing enough to get me through the last few hours of orientation.

Making contact with my physician is the last thing i had to accomplish on Friday. I am going to be working with Dr Kaprow, who has an Internal Med practice. I called and the office was closed, so i left a message and hope that calling Monday morning when it opens will be OK for my first day...

oh god, it is all beginning and I have no clue what is going on..... but i guess this is how it starts, being absolutely clueless...