Public Speaking

This weekend was the Indiana Osteopathic Association (IOA) Winter Update conference. It was located in downtown Indianapolis. It is attended by physicians mostly from Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. Most of the physicians in attendance are primary care docs. Anyway, I volunteered to speak at this conference a few months ago. Speaking in public is somewhat nerve racking to begin with, but speaking to an audience made up of physicians who have more experience than you adds an additional amount of anxiety. I could choose any topic so I decided to do my talk on concussions. Obviously concussions are in the news a lot these days regarding long term increases in morbidity and mortality due to repeated hits to the head seen in football players. I focused most of my talk on acute management, return to play protocols, and current research. I just gave this talk a few hours ago and overall I think it went pretty well. Funny thing - the fire alarm went off and the whole room had to be evacuated just minutes before my talk. You cannot plan for stuff like that, obviously, which made for an interesting beginning to my talk.

Last week I switched from pediatrics to internal medicine. My pediatric rotation was at a different hospital from where I usually work. Overall I enjoyed my pediatrics rotation. Our hospital is very medicine heavy so I was able to see a lot of stuff that I've never seen before, including a text book case of Kawasaki Syndrome. Besides seeing kids on the pediatric floor, I also spent a lot of time in labor & delivery seeing newborn babies and in the neonatal intensive care unit seeing premature infants. I even got to do some procedures there like lumbar punctures and UV lines. Overall it was a good experience and in general I enjoy working with kids so it's something I'd like to do more of in the future. My only complaint is that I don't think the hospital is used to having residents around and subsequently sometimes didn't really know how to use me well. I voiced my opinion on this to a few people so hopefully things will be better in the future.

Like I said, I am back on internal medicine. I feel like I've done IM 1,000 times at this hospital. It is something I am pretty used to so it is starting to become a bit routine. So far nothing interesting to report in the first week.