Cardiology in children’s hospital internship - I

Last week I’ve started running my internship in pediatric health care, for the upcoming period of 4 weeks. It all started out very basic with some classes on the various specialties dealing with pediatrics, of course there’s too many specialties to cover them all but many of the major ones were brought forth. After that it [...]

Last week I’ve started running my internship in pediatric health care, for the upcoming period of 4 weeks. It all started out very basic with some classes on the various specialties dealing with pediatrics, of course there’s too many specialties to cover them all but many of the major ones were brought forth.

After that it became quite exciting since we had to give up our preferences for the ones on which we had to work in teams of 2 then for the upcoming weeks. My choice in this went out for cardiology, intensive care and pulmonology; three specialties which all were popular choices, so the odds were against me you’d say.

Yesterday though after a short guided tour throughout the children’s hospital and many hours of waiting the announcements were there, and guess what! Cardiology, the moment I heard it there was this feeling of just wanting to shout “YES!” through me. Especially since 2 couples were placed within none of their choices because simply nobody picked something as boring as diabetes and another subject.

So cardiology it was; to be in particular we’ll be looking at the tetralogy of Fallot, a congenital heart defect, in the upcoming weeks and conclude it with a presentation. We’ve spent yesterday afternoon and this morning working on that, gathering information in regards to what this birth defect is, how the survival rates are, what the lives of these people look like and etcetera.

As you might understand it’s a lot of information coming by us, but I do feel confident already that it will work out well. Unlike last year’s subject on which I had to write a review, namely screening for anus cancer in relation to genital warts which barely had any information available, tetralogy of Fallot comes with a complete overdose.

Today we also had to attend a session in which the cases of the patients were discussed, it’s like sitting in some medical series. All those possible diagnosis coming by, discussing on whether something can or can’t be seen and etcetera. Some of which I understood quite well, but most I could follow a bit and sometimes see what they talked about but definitely wouldn’t be able to make a diagnosis on it by myself.

One thing I like though is how these doctors actually didn’t expect us to be some sort of miracle creatures which knew everything already, so not being able to make a diagnosis won’t get you bashed into the ground. It simply makes your internship a lot more pleasant that way.

Tomorrow we’ll be seeing some echocardiography (ultrasound of the heart) and with that finally get to see our first patients, from the other group which did cardiology I heard that it was a lot of fun to do so let’s see.