Christmas break flew by and now we are all one week in our
first clinical rotations! My first one
is at Butler Memorial Hospital which is about an hour north of Pittsburgh. Here
they do not have PA’s, it’s just me and a gross tech. The gross tech does a lot of the smaller
specimens and I get to focus on the larger specimens. It is a little nerve wracking, but I can
already tell this is going to be great experience. I have only been there 4 days so far and I
have already grossed 4 colons, a uterus, a thyroid, a lung lobectomy, a bunch
of placentas, and some other miscellaneous type of specimens. Two of the colons I grossed were for tumor so
I also did my first full lymph node search. Monday they have a prostatectomy on
the surgery schedule along with another thyroid! I have never grossed a prostate so this will
be another first for me. In addition to
the larger specimens, I am responsible for getting the morning run of smaller
specimens on the processor. This
consists of a lot of skin biopsies since they have a derm pathologist that
works there. I never thought I would
have gross this many larger specimens at this point in my rotation. I was very nervous about there not being PA’s
there to help me, but it hasn’t been too bad.
I definitely have to ask the doctors for help sometimes, but I really
feel like our year of course work prepared us for rotations.
I addition to our rotations, we also have exams the last Friday
of every month. We have a list of
reading assignments and objectives to do in order to prepare for these
exams. I am so tired when I get home
every day so I know it will be difficult to study but I am hoping to use the
weekend to catch up! I plan on blogging in
a few weeks to share my thoughts on the halfway mark of this rotation and I will
continue to blog throughout the year at all my other sites!
