For my surgery rotation, I had Professor Melendez as my site evaluator. Professor Melendez is known to be a very fair grader and also helps out his students when they are having trouble during the site visit. For my first site visit, I chose to present a case that I had seen in the vascular clinic. A patient had presented with worsening varicose veins. I chose to present this particular case because, to be honest, I was not really too confident in presenting an actual surgical case. I was too scared that I would write something that did not make sense, so I decided to play it safe. One could obviously assume that my presentation was pretty boring, which it was. On top of that, I was so nervous that I forgot the treatment of resistant varicose veins, which is sclerotherapy. But when I was presenting this, I completely forgot the name, and started to make stuff up. I had said that valve replacement was also one of the treatments for varicose veins, which was not. My site evaluator kindly encouraged me to read up on the difference between varicose veins and chronic venous insufficiency. It turned out that I was a little confused about the two of them and I kept mixing the treatment up. As for my pharm cards, never had I felt so unprepared. I guess because of my scheduling, waking up at three everyday and falling asleep at nine or ten, caught up to me. I could not memorize the pharm cards for the life of me, and the one’s that I could memorize, were slipping away from me while I was presenting. It was very embarrassing, but Professor Melendez did his best to help me out, especially with the side effects. We ended the first site evaluation with him asking me to bring two H&P’s the next time I come, with another five pharm cards, as well as an article.
The final site evaluation was scheduled on my last week, three days before the end of my rotation. At this point I felt a little bit more confident in presenting an H&P that was directly related to surgery. I decided to present an orthopedic case, where there was a man that came into the emergency room for an ulnoradial fracture. Because I saw this patient from the beginning to the end, including his surgery, I felt a lot more confident presenting him. I did not receive much feed back when I presented, so I am assuming that it was okay. I then presented my article, which was not related to my case, but it was related to orthopedics, where anterior hip replacement was becoming the standard procedure, when compared to the traditional posterior approach. I did not get into the statistics too much, because I don’t think it mattered too much, but I summarized the article in a very concise manner, to which I hope the professor appreciated it. As for the pharm cards, once again, I screwed up. I think I was a little bit more prepared this time, however it was no where near what I should have been. Everything started to slip my mind again, and I became a nerveous wreck. Professor Melendez still tried his best to give me hints, especially when it came to side effects, but I don’t think I did a good job at all. I should have studied more and should have not let my personal life interfere with my professional one. Overall, I think I received good constructive criticism and I am glad surgery rotation is over.

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