Emergency Medicine ended with a bang, I spent my two week holiday break traveling to NYC/Massachusetts/Maine/the Poconos, and my fourth rotation has officially started. This rotation is a combo of long term care/behavioral medicine. The first week and a half is spent in a nursing home, and the second four weeks I will be working in an outpatient substance abuse counseling program.

My first day in the nursing home was yesterday. It was very, very laid back. I'm used to only having 3-5 minutes with my patients in the ER, and we could take 20-30 minutes working with our patients yesterday. It's good that I am in the nursing home again, because it's forcing me to take a comprehensive approach to my patients. During my last two rotations, surgery and ER, you were only focused on the problem at hand that had brought the patient to see you. I was told several times "Well, we don't really care about that right now, that's their primary doc's job to manage." Now, I'm in charge of every aspect of my patients health, and it's been refreshing