today I met a patient.

Exciting, right? Sometimes the whole 'slow introduction to the hospital' thing seems stupidly slow. For instance, I've had a total of 10 in-hospital clinical hours and only 10 minutes of all those hours have been spent with an actual real human being. The rest? Spent talking about how to talk to our patients. I guess this is a big issue??

We also spent a fair bit of time going over our client's chart. And holy hannah, those are huge charts. At DP we have one big binder per floor. At the Glen, there's one big binder per patient. And in it you got your admitting papers, allergy papers, care papers, discharge papers, med papers, neuropsych papers, and all other types of papers!! It's all crammed into one binder. And it's true what they say - Doctors really do have the messiest writing. I spent 5 minutes trying to read a line of scrawl just to realize it said: "nothing significant noted in right arm". Gee, thanks Doc.

We met our patient who we'd be dealing with individually next Monday, and then every Monday afterwards. I have the fortune of being paired with a lovely patient, well on their way through rehabilitation. It's a little odd though, because she is the exact age as my mom and has children my age. I am in a position to help her, and semi-responsible for her care, yet the age difference put us at a difficult spot. She used to being completely independent and responsible for kids my age - not the other way around! So we'll see where these next few weeks take us - I hope a bond will develop!

D.