I'm Starting My Internship. What Should I Be ready For And How Can I Efficiently Use This Time?

I'm starting my internship in med school. What should I be ready for and how can I efficiently use this time?

This question wsa originally posted on Quora.com and was answered by Sumya Hasan, MBBS Medicine and Healthcare (2017)

If by “internship” you mean you are attending daily shifts in a hospital (or multiple hospitals) and completing a certain number of weeks in each major field of medicine as part of your requirements for completing medical school then I have a few suggestions that many of my former classmates and colleagues would probably agree with:

1. STUDY when you’re not in shift- Clinical life is very different from what you learn in a lecture hall during your first few years as a medical student. Yes, of course the lectures will help you to understand the condition “theoretically” but you can’t expect that doctors will just give you all the time in the world to really sit you down and go through the pathophysiology of a condition that you see during morning rounds. If you are planning on taking a board/licensing exam for post graduate training (AMC, PLAB, USMLE etc) DO NOT let this intern year go to waste. You don’t necessarily have to study for 6 hours, BUT if you see patients who have asthma, DM or suffered from a seizure when you were on shift one day, look those conditions up on that day itself. The basic theory behind them as well as how to manage them
2. IF YOU DO however find doctors who love to teach students, FOLLOW THEM. Bother them. Get as much as you can from them. It’s such a GIFT when someone who is a part of the medical staff is willing to give you their time because they care about you and your education. This isn’t just doctors either. The amount that nurses taught me either about how to perform certain tasks or just how to navigate as a part of the medical team was very valuable.
3. Prepare to feel ignored occasionally- It’s nothing personal really. You just aren’t considered as important when you’re an intern. And this isn’t something that we should feel insulted by. Of course an intern should be treated with respect and appreciated when they work hard and do what needs to be done, but you will have times where you may feel like you’re being “dismissed”. Just try to get as much as you can from the experience and be patient
4. Bedside manner MATTERS- This is not the library or lecture hall. You are dealing with people, NOT just their condition. Sometimes as young students we are in such a habit of getting excited or interested in a “rare” condition that we don’t always pay attention to the fact that our reaction may be seen by the patient or their loved ones. While medical students and residents and even some younger specialists can empathize with these kinds of moments, it’s incredibly inappropriate to look like you’re gonna celebrate when a human being is suffering while admitted in a hospital or when they dropped everything else in their day to come to the clinic for an appointment.

I feel like this is really long already so I’ll just end it here. These are the 4 things that came to my mind when I read your question. Very best of luck I hope you learn a lot!

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