M3 year has flown by. Sometimes I still can't believe I an M4 now and on my pediatrics sub-internship. This is by far my most difficult month of med school yet, more so than even surgery. I literally act as a functional intern on one of the pediatrics ward teams, except all my orders have to be verified by my senior resident.
There are rewarding moments. There are moments and areas that I feel I shine at. But all that is overshadowed by this constant anxious feeling that I'm not doing enough, or not doing things the right way, or not thinking fast enough. It's terrifying. Being the one responsible for a child's care in the hospital is daunting. It's not that I don't basically know what to do, it's that I'm unable to instantly anticipate all possible (worst) outcomes and prepare for it.
I'm able to prioritize tasks fairly easily, to do what needs to be done, but I can't prioritize my thoughts as quickly when someone asks me a question or I'm asked to present a patient. The information is there, but it's not organized the way I (later) type it up and it's unfiltered because I just ramble all the information - pertinent and non-pertinent. I don't know why I'm getting flustered and blanking.
I'm now 2 weeks in to the rotation, about half-way done. And I feel like I haven't significantly improved despite working my ass off. Today was the worst day. I showed up and was instantly handed 5 patients I didn't know, didn't have sufficient time to read through their chart, and on top of that I was the one admitting a new patient and had to do her whole work-up. I was a mess and constantly second-guessing everything I said the whole day after that. It took me way longer to catch up than it should.
Words can't express how defeated I feel right now. How stupid I feel. How slow I feel. How not cut out for this I feel. Maybe I should consider switching fields. This was not how I expected to start M4 year, and definitely not how I expected this month to go.
