Welcome to my new place of employment. I am now an official attending physician employed by Jamaica Hospital. So far I have had the usual ups and downs of a new job - fear, excitement, missing the old job and coworkers, and making new friends. It will take some time. I am learning the New York Way (CYA) very quickly. Perhaps the best training I had for this was at Saints. For those of you who know - it feels very similar with size, staffing, bazaar cases, and the sheer speed of the OR (ha, ha). I just had my first 24 hour call and survived - of course it was an unusual busy day in labor and delivery. A partner had a surprise c-hyst for a percreta and I had to call in the other doc on call to help with my first ever surgery as an attending. I will continue to learn a lot and still wish I could walk out of the room and discuss the patient with Dr. Bradley. Below is a photo I took of the outside of my office building. It is a women's health center and has ultrasound, NSTs, mammography, and DEXA scanning available. It is just around the corner from the main hospital, so I still take the E train to work every day. I love the staff and the patients so far have been great and appreciative. I am not a fan of the charting system and am trying to learn all the small differences in care standards for New York. I have stepped back in time by about 10 years here. They just stopped doing the conventional (slide) pap smears the beginning of this year. We do not have access to FFN here and L&D has no microscope?! All in all, I am happy to have this experience to see and learn how to practice medicine outside of West Michigan. We should always look for opportunities for personal challenge and growth - at least that is what I try to convince myself of daily!
