It’s almost noon. I’m standing next to the team of doctors on ward round, fighting the urge to shake my legs or do fifty jumping jacks or do a sprint down the hallway, anything to keep me from falling asleep and crashing on top of the patient. No, I am not sleep-deprived, I am just incredibly bored. It seems that in this rotation, the student’s role is to stand back and watch. I am but a mere observer on ward rounds, at clinics, and on consults. It is really hard to stay focused when I know I am not expected to contribute anything more than getting the patient’s charts. So I stand back, twiddle my thumbs, smile at the patient, and watch the team in action. Occasionally I find myself dragging my mind back from outer space when the team is ready to move on to the next patient.
Perhaps this rotation isn’t really that different from any other ones, but it feels especially jejune from the stark contrast to my elective, where the excitement of being in a new and exotic place and being able to do so much made it a joy to go through each day. So it was inevitable that the crash back down to earth hit me hard as I returned to the daily grind. I have found myself, on more than one occasion while ward rounds start to drag on, taking my mind ten thousand kilometers away and replaying images and episodes of my time in Zambia. Good times…
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