My Summer Training Experience

Hi everybody, 

We are almost done with July and that very crazy how days move so fast!!! And this a good indicator that I had great time in my summer training. This summer I trained in King Fahad University hospital at Obstetrics and Gynecology department and let me say that, the summer training this year is a huge blessing from Allah and it was the best choice for me Alhamdullah. 

I enjoyed being in place feels like home and seeing familiar faces that I know, even though it was difficult at the beginning to adjust because no one of my close friends are around me. However, I think being alone without my friends was a great opportunity for me to meet new people and be more sociable with strangers. I got to know amazing students, nurses and doctors, I talked more than I used to before during this training. So, this experience had a positive impact on my social skills and boosted my confidence.

When it comes to playing a role in a team, I have done a better job this time and I worked more as a doctor and as an older colleague to another medical student. I won't say that I did the best job in teaching them new things, but I tried to keep them in the picture with me and gave me a chance to know them in person. Also, I was happy to share stories from my obvious experience in OBGYN during my clerkship. I was more than happy to offer help and get them involved with me in clinics, operating room and Ultrasound. I really hoped that they had a good experience like I did. 

When it comes to knowledge, I did very well because I had a good amount of information because of my clerkship and because I had a love to OBGYN. I used my 5th year notes and case files book to review a lot during the training and I used my phone notes to write down new things to look them up and learn them better. I was easier this time to connect the new information to old ones and to apply my skills, and this is not because of me alone, but also because of the great doctor who always said yes to me whenever I ask to perform something or ask the patient about something. 

I am now able to use the hospital file system in excellent way and do documentation of patients' hospital visit, so this made me able to do more work as a junior in the clinic. Also, I learned how to read US and more specifically anomaly scan and because of the greatest teacher that I have who invested her time on me and gave me many great experiences the most important one was scrubbing in the OR for the 1st time as student and she let me do a lot. I will always remember that day with all of it details, because this was my biggest goals of the summer training. 

With all the things I learned and did during those four weeks, I had amazing times with other classmates, attended lectures, drank ton of good coffee. I made ton of good memories and I've changed more than I thought I would in four weeks time, and I think this is because of combination of factors which are: having aim every morning, being around motivated people and having good doctors who are welling to teach and answer my questions. 

Aside from all the positive times and things, I witnessed very painful moments for my patients and my heart broke because of their tears, seeing the dark side of the specialty is as important as shine / bright side. Because this a reality of medicine and huge part of practice to empathize with patients and break the bad new to them.  

In general we are "as student" play major part in making our summer training experience great or meh "bad one", we can make it so memorable and even amazing like what I had Alhamdullah. Don't be shy and quite all the time, ask to do and offer help, they would not let you down if they saw you interested. It's totally Okay to make mistakes and don't answer all the questions, and it's okay to say I don't know but the most important thing is to look things up and learn them so you can become better student and future doctor. 

I would highly recommend for any of you to read more about the history taking and physical examination of the specialty that you are going to train under to be able to do more and improve your skills. Write things down, be on time and be part of the team at all times and be thankful for the chances that you have. 

I hope that you enjoyed reading this post,

I did it 1st for me to look back and for you to get something from it.

Thank you for your time and feel free to ask me questions 

Keep Blooming