Happy New Year and welcome back

This morning I had to get up at that all to familiar hour of 4:00 am to get into the city in time for my orientation for the pediatrics rotation. My first orientation was with all the students from my school who are currently starting their pediatric rotation. We have about 6 different locations affiliated with my school. After that orientation I had to hurry with 2 other students over to our hospital where we are doing our rotation for a 2nd orientation. Basically we are given access to the computer systems, briefed on all the different protocols and given ID badges. We were also given our schedules. 

I am doing inpatient care for the first 3 weeks and out patient clinic for the last 3 weeks. I should see a good mix. Once my 2nd orientation was over we were dropped off at the pediatric ward and put to work. The main attending who I will be working with for the next 3 weeks is out of town so we reported to the residents who were not to informative or talkative. I was assigned my first patient which was interesting.

My patient is a 16 month old male who was playing unsupervised in the garage and when his mother came out to bring him inside she saw that he had an open jar of paint thinner that he had spilled down his chin and it looked like he may have drank some as well. The mother brought him to the emergency room where he was not in any distress. The emergency department physician decided to admit him for observation as we could not be sure whether he consumed paint thinner or not. The patient's mother and father were both there and they only speak spanish. They have 6 children ages; 14, 11, 8, 5, 3, 16 months. Neither of them could explain why the 16 month old was playing in the garage in sub zero weather unsupervised. I did a full physical exam of the child and spoke with the parents at length. The child did not seem to be in any distress and a chest xray showed some possible infiltrates which could be pneumonia or could be from aspiration. The xray was really inconclusive. I noticed that the same child had been to the ER a couple of months ago for aspiration of a foreign body which basically means that the baby chocked on a toy or something he put in his mouth. 

The chief resident talked with poison control and we basically decided to keep the patient overnight for further observation. I had a couple other patients but nothing super interesting. My 2nd patient is a 2 year old with RSV and my 3rd patient is a 4 month old with a urinary tract infection (UTI). They let me leave this afternoon at a decent hour and I have to be back early tomorrow morning to round on my patients and then present them to the residents. 

I guess I am back in action and although the break was extremely nice, it is also nice to be back in the hospitals.