Week 3

I'm starting to find my groove in working at the clinic. I saw 3 dentist patients and 2 refill patients. Its going to be more than a month till my next post because for the next two weeks, the clinic is closed.

Week 2

I'm pretty late for this post.... There isn't really an excuse except for summer and finals. So on my second week, I learned a lot out about the people I'm going to work with. I learned that I really can't count on my preceptor to help me stand out, rather I have to do it by myself. I took all the dentist patients myself on my second week. It was really fun doing it by myself even though I technically wasn't allowed to. Student manager's have it tough, but I want to get there. Being able to steer the ship has always been a dream of mine and starting from today. I think i stand a pretty good shot. I need to find somebody who speaks spanish to be my buddy, so we can plow through the patients. All of this will help me become a manager. I dont know what else to say so bye!

First Day in Clinic

let me start off by saying that yesterday was not what i expected at all. In the month between posts a lot of stuff has happened. I almost got fired before I even started, Enrique started to get on my nerves, and i grew more and more paranoid each passing day that i was going to get yelled at on my first day.

Okay first stuff now, I walked in expecting to be thrown into the deep in with a mountain of patients to see and a person yelling at me at every possible opportunity. Well..... That didn't happen. The first day went like this; I went there, set up the clinic, got a practitioner (Zak), saw a patient, saw another patient, took a dinner break, went to talk to the doctors twice, and then spent 2-3 hours talking with people because there was nothing to do. It was extremely laid back except for a brief window of time when I had to interact with patients. It wasn't what I expected at all... My practitioner told me that this is what I should expect for the rest of my Westminster career. Let's hope that isn't the case.

What stood out to me this week was how patient the patients were while waiting for the doctor to see them. My second patient waited for 4 hours with relatively little trouble or anxiety. How do they do it.... How do they sit through months of pain then wait patiently to see a doctor for 10 minutes.

See you guys next time,
AZC

First Day of Training

Well this is going to be my first entry. I don't know what quite to say but here it goes. I walked into the room expecting very little; a table or two, and lots of teaching about techniques and procedures. It was very different from what I expected. The room was set up with 3 rows of tables seating 9 people each, and in front of each seat was a binder that was basically the manual. The training comprised of; a lecture about patient confidentiality and how if we break it we would suffer very bad consequences, some training with pulse, respiration, and temperature, and why we, as teen interns, should take pride in the fact that we are making a difference in the community. The training was enjoyable but what really got to me were the people that were accepted alongside me. Most were of Hispanic background and there were very few Asians.  This scared me at first because I always felt more comfortable with Asians, its just they way I grew up. However, everyone was extremely friendly and polite, making the training a pleasant experience. I met a couple people, Shanze and Enrique were the two that really made an impression on me. I'll be following up on those two in my next post. I'll talk to you later.