Crow's Nest...

I have achieved another milestone in the process of settling down here. After having bought and driven my car without a MN License for a while i completed the process of acquiring a new license today. I had already passed my written component of the test earlier but just today i took my driving test. It was the usual 15 minute affair and then the feedback up until when i felt i had failed the test and will have to come back another day. But surprisingly i passed and have been issued a MN driver's license. The driving test station was about 25 miles from the place where i live and i had no appointment for the test. Luckily there weren't many people to take the test and i was done by 11 am. Unlike Junaid and others who had to wait for more than four hours to take the test i had to wait for about an hour. The issuance of the license is important in bringing down my car insurance which at the moment is unbearably high. Once the insurance goes down i will be able to manage m...

I have been up and awake for almost 18 hours now. I did one of my better shifts in the ED last night. By the time I was done there was no transport to take me back hom eso I had to sit and wait in the resident lounge. Tried to sleep the time off but it gets kind of difficult to go to sleep in all the lights around you. Missed the first bus and had to sit and wait for the next one for 40 minutes. Anyways I am here to talk about the kind devil in disguise that I have had to learn to operate and handle in the last 3 weeks. It is the all encompassing health care management system used in our hospital and in most of the hospitals in the US, with paperless working. It is essentially a programme that keeps track of everything that goes on with the patient and the related entities from every health care provider's point of view. When a patient comes to the hospital he/she comes in contact with a diverse number of providers. There are the doctors, there are the nurses, there are the...

As sensational as this title might seem to many it is just another term that doctors have to come across very often in this day of overwhelming technology. It is something that clutters your EPIC inbox but you can't do anything about. But the title of the folder "Delinquent Encounters" is dreadful enough to have prompted an inquiry from my, otherwise lazy, brain. I think that it if there is a true link between typing and CTS then all doctors who are looking to make money in their lifetime should opt for a speciality that gives them ample training in recognizing and treating this ailment. It will be little wonder to see almost 99% of the doctor population afflicted with CTS in about 20 years from now. The amount of typing that I do every day today surpasses the total amount of typing that i might have done in my lifetime. Damn you EPIC!

I did my first continuity clinic today. My own clinic, my own patients, my own treatment and my own responsibility. This is good stuff. This is freedom unparalleled. I will get my own business card to give to my patients. Now how cool is that. On the other side I have learned a bit more about my Blackberry. I have finally configured it to receive my facebook alerts and more so I have finally found out how to post pictures directly from my phone to the facebook account. This is important as there are many beautiful places around here that will soon be covered in thick snow and cloudy overcast skies if not captured in the memory of my camera. The twin cities are a place worth exploring not only for their natural beauty and lakes but also for some of their culture and architecture, which seems really astounding. Once I get my own car, by the end of this week or the next week, I will set aside some time for exploring the place around. But from all the little journey making that ...

I have thankfully one week of rotation in ED. Almost all of my shifts have been during the night and it gets pretty busy on the weekends. More so when there is a twins game on the weekend. the metrodome is at a stone's through and all kind of drunks and deluded people end up in the ED. Most of the people have injuries from petty fights that break out when people are drunk. But there are other different things too. All in all there is always a good mix of patients in the ED from a broad spectrum of disease groups. I can imagine that the ED residents must learn a lot during the course of their three years here.

I am moving a bit ahead of the actual time frame on this blog. My orientation officially ended today. I am on one of the so called non-call months in ED. It therefore was not part of my duty at the end of the day to get the sign off from the senior G1s. I left the place earlier than most of my fellow interns. ED begins tomorrow and there is said to be a tnesion between the my parent department and ED bunch. And we are therefore relegated to seemingly trash work. But lets see what happens once I begin ED.

I have finished configuring my home network for the notebook and the all in one printer machine. It was a cumbersome process involving more than one software but everything worked out just fine. I was out buying a wireless router yesterday and the Best Buy guy wanted to sell me a Linksys G router with Geek Squad installation support for 108 bucks. I opted for a cheaper alternative instead. It is a wireless Linksys G router with no Geek Squad support. I am my own Geek Squad. Configuring the network took me sometime but saved me quite a lot of money. I mean connecting the router and enabling wireless access for the notebook was a walkthrough process which is self explanatory and that is what most of the home users use their networks for. Why on earth anyone would pay an extra 70 bucks for connecting a computer to the network. Connecting printers to the network is a bit complicated but not very difficult. If I can do it anyone can do it. So there is no point in paying any Geek ...