March 09 Radiology

I'm doing radiology this month in Houston at Hermann (level 1 trauma-private)which is in the Houston Med center. For those of you not familiar with Houston & its Med Center it means one thing "NO PARKING" unless you want to pay a frigging crazy sum of money for a precious parking spot. Well of course I would not fork over any money for such a luxury since my rotation is no call, no weekends. I park at Rice stadium daily (for FREE!) and walk to Hermann. It's a 1 mile walk from where I park to the hospital. The walk isn't so bad its just the crazy 80% humidity that makes my walk turn from pleasant stroll to hot, smelly, sweaty, hair all over the place -appearing crazy person.

So okay once I get past the walk, lets talk Radiology. Radiology is one awesome job. My attendings come in around 8:15am and work until about 4:30-5pm. Its such a nice relaxing, low stress atmosphere. We spend the AM looking at all the overnight CXR in all the ICU's then look at CTs after that. There are 2 attendings: one kinda looks like a young glamazon- nice clothes, perfecto makeup, designer handbag, & some expensive jewelery bespeckled over her wrists. The other is a superbly funny 60ish attending from NY. He's jewish and was a former staff at John Hopkins. Well overcourse during the rotation you kinda feel out who can hang around and who doesn't really want you hanging around them. Well I get the feeling the glamazon doesn't really want me around her when she's dictating. So I spend most my time with the later funny attending which is great for me. It's just that he's going to gone for an entire week on a meeting I dont know what to do. I tried hanging around a resident but since she's a first year its not helpful to sit and watch her. Any suggestions. On afternoons that the glamazon attending is the only person in the room, I take the afternoon off. I hope they chang attendings or something, what am I going to do for a whole week?
Did I mention: that the glamazon told me to excuse myself and go to the library while she and the resident have a talk in the "reading room". I mean literally i had to go to the library (around the hall) and I read from like 8:15 to 9am, until my funny attending came it and I felt it safe to go back.

Well besides reading Chest xrays all morning the attendings really make it fun, but sprinkling a lot of sarcasm and jokes to everyone in the room. The major thing the radioloigst has to do if they find something impt on film is notify either the nurse or dr. taking care of the pt. They do spend a lot of time dictating their findings. If there's a complicated case you can easily spend 30 mins just reviewing old images.

I'm learning alot from this rotation, its been super useful esp. learning what all the lines are on CXR and where they should be.