Career plans in Cody

doug.jpgCody at sunrise after camping on the Shoshone River the night before and my first thoughts were how beautiful the country is in the early morning and that I could definitely live there. Cody is a town of hard working blue-collar people, a lot of ranchers, and of course people were very friendly. It was fun being geographically isolated, getting to practice true general medicine and take care of things specialists would take care of in bigger cities. We got the sickest patients in town. Every week, we spent a half-day in even smaller places – Powell, Meeteetse, Grable – and people appreciated us. I was already 100% interested in small town general medicine before Cody, because of rural rotations I did as a student at Colorado. In Cody, I learned I want to practice in a place with an established medical community, where internists work together and share call. I look forward to being in Soldotna in the spring, to see a medical practice with a reputation of being well run.

Taking care of the same patients for years

River near DillonIn my Seattle clinic, I usually feel I have one chance to fix a patient and all I’m doing is trying to get in the ballpark, so Dillon was so educational. It’s the only rotation where you’re in the same clinic every day, eight hours per day. The patients were ranchers and cowboys, tough guys with terrible problems that you could do something about, like a guy with diabetes who brought me his home glucose numbers and actually followed up the next week. My clinical skills improved so much from seeing patients back and seeing if what I’d tried had worked. My preceptor, Dr. Loge, has been in Dillon twenty-five years. He’s one of the most important mentors I’ve met. He has that clinical intuition you only develop after years and years, and he really knows the medical literature. The rotation with him really changed my outlook, even though I’m not doing primary care. I’m going into cardiology and I’ve thought about being a small town cardiologist with a small primary care practice, now that I’ve experienced what it’s like to know patients for twenty years.

Information, comments and blogs about regional teaching