one month in ...

The first month of my residency is coming to an end, and here are the take-home messages I've, well, taken home.

-Pathology is all about self-motivated study. I've spent a month in the microbiology lab, and I've seen more Staph and Strep than I have bricks on a wall. A couple of other "known" bugs have shown up (Nocardia, Klebsiella), but there are plenty of bread-and-butter pathogens I haven't seen. And, of course, there are tons of rare guys I haven't spotted and never will. How to learn about them? Hit a book.

-It's the same story for surgical pathology. Even if you look at slides all day every day (which some of the residents feel like they're doing), you might not see half of the entities you have to be able to diagnose. So, study. Grab a book. Grab the study slides. Grab a colleague. And study. (After you've worked until 9 p.m., of course.)

-Books. So many books. I have bought three so far with my book fund, and I know roughly which other books I want to get this year. This leaves me with about six "must-have" books I need to get, and, oh, thirty or forty "should-get" books to pencil in somewhere on my list. In Internal Medicine, you can get by with Harrison's, Pocket Medicine, and a good PDA. In Pathology, you can get by after you've purchased a nice, sturdy bookshelf.

-Thank goodness I have four years to learn all of this. Or at least, enough to feel like something more than a total moron. I'll never know it all. It's not even remotely possible.

-The other residents are really cool. We've gone out to dinner and out for drinks, there was a 4th of July barbeque, another gathering is scheduled for this weekend, and then there's the big "beginning of the year" party next month. Pathology gives you time to be social, and while we feel for our colleagues in ob-gyn and surgery residencies, that doesn't stop us from enjoying our free time.

-I sold my oto-ophthalmoscope for cash. Sweet! I'm keeping my stethoscope, though.

-I need to carry around a little pamphlet that explains what pathologists are and do. It would cut down on the confused looks I get. Or, even better: I'll post about it on my blog! Stay tuned; it should be up later this week. No, really.