And just like that, we completed first year of residency.
I honestly feels a part of me can’t digest the fact that we ACTUALLY matched and actually finished one whole year — this is the life we dreamed of, right?

Last year in the first week if July, I had my first day of being on call. It was a weekend call and I was sooo overwhelmed. I had new patients + my own patients + covered another team’s patients from noon + did my first admission. Literally felt like I knew nothing

I remember, I was paged by a nurse saying my patient got short of breath and I f r e a k e d out. For a split second, I was like “why is she calling me, she should be calling a real doctor” (v common feeling during intern year when you feel you aren’t good enough to be a where you are)

So my first instinct was to ask her to get vitals and finerstick, I called my seniors and rushed to my patient’s room to check on him. Luckily, he was vitally stable, was able to talk and he felt out of breath cuz it was quite hot in the room. My seniors assessed the patient and reassured me things like this are pretty common and that I’ll get used to handling it. I was like d a m n x_x I remember my heart racing SO much when this happened

Cut to a few months later, another patient had trouble breathing, but this time I was way calmer. He went into Afib w RVR. I was able to do the initial work up to diagnose it first, come up w a plan and then ran it by my senior. So yepp, it does get better.

I’ve made mistakes, been hella inefficient and been on the verge of breaking down at least twice, lol. It’s all a part of learning.

You may feel like you don’t know anything but trust me, w dedication, you can make things better for you. And the amount of growth you’ll see will be insane.

The only “clinical experience” I had was as a 4th year med student taking history from patients and presenting during rounds. I never worked as a doctor. Even my internship took place online due to covid lmao.

So if I can do it, anyone can. Y’all got this!! 🫶

Scrubs: @french_terrain