My intern year of residency has been an utter whirlwind. Time is passing by in what seems like unprecedented speeds. In the midst of the chaos, I allow myself moments of quiet reflection. I often stop, reflect, and give thanks for being exactly where I’ve always wanted to be. I am practicing medicine as a resident physician, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
Throughout the nearly five months that I have worked as a psychiatry resident, I have learned so much more than I could have imagined about myself, clinical practice, and the fragility of human health. A mixture of joys, surprises, and challenges have been at the center of my growth. Before I get into the meat of my reflections, I’ll give a broad logistical overview of what my experience in residency has been like so far.
The Logistics of Intern Year
As a psychiatry resident at Penn, my intern year is split into two phases. I can either be on-service, which means that I am rotating through varying in-patient psychiatric units within the hospital system. When I’m off-service, I’m completing my non-psychiatry general medicine months. Thus far, I have done three months of psychiatry, and I’m smack in the middle of my first off-service block. The first month in the block was spent in the emergency medicine department. I’m now on the in-patient medicine units through December.
Growth During Intern Year
Now that you have a better sense of what I have been doing during my intern year, let’s get to how I have been. As I previously mentioned, intern year has been a mix of joys, surprises, and challenges. All of these experiences have allowed me the chance to grow in multiple aspects of my life. Spiritually, I have become increasingly connected with God and my faith as a Christian. Emotionally, I’m learning how to better live a life of contentment. A mindset of contentment has brought me real peace in recent weeks. Mentally, I remember that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. When the days are tough and it feels like the work I do is too much to handle, I know that God is always beside me and that puts my mind at ease. Professionally, I know that I’m getting great training at Penn. Intern year has not been easy by any means, but as each rotation progresses, I realize that my attendings and senior residents daily mold me into the doctor that I have always wanted to be. Physically, things honestly haven’t been that great, but I’m making steps to get back to equilibrium!
Joys of Intern Year
Doing what I’ve always wanted to do
I’ve always known that I wanted to be a doctor. So every day of residency feels like I’m walking in my purpose. Even now that I’m off-service, I’m grateful for the privilege of taking care of my patients. It’s hard work, but it’s the work I’ve wanted to do since I was four years old. There are many times throughout a given workday that I stop and think to myself “Wow. You’re really doing this.” I’ve spent the last decade of my life working toward this goal of being a doctor. Each day that I get to live out my dream during intern year, I count as a huge blessing.
Making an Impact for Patients and their Families
Impact-driven living is at the center of how I make decisions on a daily basis. So it’s no surprise to me that I find joy in my work (even on the hard days) because every single day, I make a meaningful impact, no matter how small. Whether it’s the moments I take the time to explain disease processes to my patients or spend time on the phone updating families about their loved one’s health, I find real meaning and purpose in the work that I do.
Learning How to be a Great Doctor
In medical school, we learn about the basic sciences. We learn to think about the pathophysiology of disease, the mechanism of action of drugs, and the maneuvers of the physical exam. Throughout my intern year so far, I’m discovering how to use the skills and knowledge I gained in medical school to create and implement medical plans for my patients. I’m also learning that the practice of medicine is so much more than a diagnosis and a treatment. Every day, intern year teaches me that to be a great doctor, I must first care for myself. It is only from a complete vessel that I am able to give my patients my best efforts every day.
The practice of medicine is so much more than a diagnosis and a treatment.
Surprises of Intern Year
Intern Year is much better than medical school
I did not enjoy many facets of medical school. In fact, I’d go as far as to say clerkship year of medical school was hands down the worst year of my life. So, it’s probably easy to see why I spent the majority of my year in business school dreading the idea of residency. I thought, “If residency is anything like medical school, issa no for me dawg.” However, I will forever be grateful that I discovered my interest in and passion for the field of psychiatry at the 11th hour. Because, now, I can emphatically say that, despite its challenges, intern year is exponentially better than medical school.
When I think back to the parts of medical school that I disliked the most, a couple of things come to mind. First, medical school is a pressure cooker in that we’re being evaluated in some form at all times. Whether it’s block exams, shelf exams, or clinical evaluations, the entirety of medical school is based on performing well, so that you can hopefully match into the specialty of your dreams at the residency program you desire. Thankfully, I found that once intern year started, all of that pressure went out of the window. As a medical student, I would feel stressed over not knowing the answer to a question my attending posed. Now? When I don’t know an answer, I simply ask the other person to explain their thought process so that next time I face a similar situation, I know what to do. Most of the time it doesn’t matter whether or not I know the answer. What matters more is that I care enough to learn, so that each day I have a broader knowledge set and stronger clinical acumen than the day before.
The second way in which intern year is better than medical school is that I finally have a steady income and a lot more free time. Yes, I worked while in medical school, but there’s something substantially different about having disposable income compared to just getting by. I no longer stress (as much) about going out to eat with friends or splurging on my guilty pleasures like bubble tea and chocolate. As far as free time is considered, residency feels a lot more relaxed than medical school, even during my busiest weeks. I think the biggest contributor to this is that in medical school, I felt as though I needed to use all of my free time to study, whereas now, I’m a lot more comfortable using my free time to live life and explore my non-medical passions.
I remember more than I thought I would
Even though there are random things that I don’t remember on the wards, like which clotting factors are associated with Partial Thromboplastin Time versus Prothrombin Time, there’s a lot that I do remember. Almost daily, I’m surprised by how much knowledge is floating around in my brain, waiting to seep out in the right clinical situation. Although medical school was incredibly challenging for me, I’m glad that I went to a school where I was very well trained in the content necessary to take care of my patients. At the end of the day, that’s probably the most important thing to get out of the medical school experience.
Challenges of Intern Year
Going to Church Regularly
During my on-service psychiatry months, I was blessed to go to church pretty regularly. I even rekindled my involvement with the praise and worship team at my home church. My faith is central to so much of my essence, and church for me is a way to jump-start my week through worship, Biblical teaching, and fellowship with my blood and church family. However, once my off-service rotations started, it’s been a huge challenge for me to make it to church. I’ve only had two Sundays off from work in the past two months, and I’ve been utterly exhausted on both occasions. On one of the days, I made it to church, but I was super late. On the other Sunday off, I overslept 🙁
Thankfully, my faith is built on more than going to church on Sundays. I’ve started using Priscilla Shirer’s devotional Awaken throughout the week. I go to Wharton Christian Fellowship Bible studies when I can. Bedside Baptist (aka watching sermons on YouTube) has come in quite handy. And I’m ALWAYS singing songs of worship as I walk the halls at work or when I’m resting at home in the evening. Nonetheless, the irregularity of my attendance at church has been a challenge for me in the recent months of intern year. I love going to church, and not being able to do so is a huge disruption to my weekly flow.
Getting enough sleep
When it comes to sleep, I do not mess around. If I don’t get at least 7.5 hours of sleep each night, I’m generally a cranky human throughout the day. My medicine rotation has been an incredibly difficult time when it comes to sleep. Having to wake up at 6 am is an extreme challenge for me, mostly because my natural bedtime is around 11 pm. This means that every day, I’m getting 30mins to an hour less sleep than I need while working arduous 10+ hour shifts. The sleep debt is certainly starting to build up. Yours truly is tired. No ifs ands or buts about it. I’m just looking forward to when I’m back on-service doing psychiatry rotations and can wake up at 7 am or later. It might sound like not a big deal, but for me, that extra hour means the difference between me showing up as pleasant and happy Atasha versus cranky and mad-at-the-world Atasha.
Making time for the gym
Going to the gym must be the biggest challenge for me in residency thus far. If you’ve been following my blog for awhile, you know that I’ve been an athlete all of my life, and I got back into regularly working out last year. I even did a fifty-day fitness challenge (twice!). When I moved from my apartment building to my condo, I knew that losing the in-building gym was going to be tough for me. However, when I found out that the hospital has a free gym for residents, I was sure that my cheapness would cause me to use that gym regularly. The free gym worked for the first month or so of residency, but since then, things have been a struggle. So, I recently joined a gym in my neighborhood, and I’m really excited to get back into a regular workout routine.
Rotating through off-service specialties
I’ve come to truly appreciate the diversity of temperaments and interests amongst my physician peers. There are the procedurally-minded surgeons, the broad-knowledge-acquiring internists, and the chaos-loving obstetricians. I’m currently on my off-service months which have consisted of emergency medicine and internal medicine. These specialties are incredibly important and central, to the proper functioning of a hospital system. However, I did not pursue these specialties mostly because I do not enjoy them. So now, on my off-service rotations, my biggest challenge on a daily basis is remaining intellectually curious about topics that I do not find inherently interesting. Don’t get me wrong; I obviously do my best to learn and take care of my patients. I’ve even gotten feedback from my attendings and senior residents that I’m doing a great job. Nonetheless, this past couple of months have felt like a double challenge as I work to learn how to be a good doctor and learn medical content that isn’t as stimulating for me as psychiatry.
Summary
All in all, I would say that intern year of residency so far has been great. Yes, I’m tired 95% of the time. And maybe I haven’t been able to get to church as much as I would usually like. In short, intern year has been a mix of joys, surprises, and challenges. Nonetheless, I’m ultimately training to become the best doctor that I can be, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything in the world!
Peace and blessings,
Dr. Atasha Jordan, MBA
Dr. Atasha Jordan is an Ivy League-trained psychiatry resident and businesswoman. Read Dr. Jordan’s inspiring story of discovering her passion and purpose as a mental healthcare provider and advocate. Feel free to send a message to Dr. Jordan here.
Photo credit: Harold Milton-Gorvie @afrotheman
