Resident Life

5:00am – Still in bed, calling overnight general surgery resident to get sign out, updates on inpatients overnight as well as new consults for Plastics (not common). Will also take over the Plastics pager from the overnight resident. Usually gives me another 30mins to snooze in bed. Shower, brush my teeth, coffee and cereal for a routine breakfast. Pack a few granola bars. Out my door to the hospital around 6:00am to get to the hospital by 6:15am. I live in West Town, it’s about a 10min commute to UIC which a bunch of other current residents live.

6:30am – Meet up with the Plastics team to do morning rounds. The plastics team is usually composed of 2-3 UIC Plastics fellow (PGY8 chief, PGY6 “intern”, UofC visiting resident). As the ortho intern, you’re mostly responsible for printing out the rounding list for the team, putting in vitals, key updates, grabbing supplies for dressing changes. The chief usually texts the team the night before on when/where to round the next day.

7:00am – The chief resident will set your schedule for the week over the weekend prior. Most days, you’ll be usually in the OR with the plastics resident/team. Depending on the day, there are usually 3-4 cases. UIC Plastics Department is a big craniofacial reconstruction center, as well as other common plastics procedures like breast reconstructions, panniculectomies, flaps etc. The chief knows that as ortho interns, we’re mostly involved in suturing, so they’ll usually assign us to cases that have good suturing opportunities and protect us from the nonsense cases. Unless we request for our own curiosity, we are not involved in the craniofacial cases as you may not see much in those cases, as there is minimal suturing there.

Tuesdays is usually a clinic day, so I see pre/post op patients in the Plastics clinic with the residents and attendings. This is usually a pretty chill environment, expectation is to see patients as they come in and get a good H/P, reason for visit. You’re not expected to provide opinions/treatments. The attending will come into the room and talk with patients with regards to those. Usually will see 10-15pts by the end of the day.

Throughout the day, you’ll hold the pager. Usually there are 1-2 consults that come in through the day, either from the floors or the ED. You would make the Plastics residents aware of the consults, and they will go see the patient with you. You’re not expected to see any consults by yourself or staff any consults with the attending as the off service resident. The pager overall is pretty light and quiet.

5:00pm – Most days, you’ll be done by early mid afternoon. You’ll continue carrying the pager until 5:00pm and sign out to the overnight general surgery resident. Print out an updated patient list for them, and provide them key updates on the patients, especially those that had surgery earlier that day. The overnight resident is usually an intern who knows just as little as you about Plastics, so we try to give as much details to help them get through the night with the plastics patients.

After sign out, you’re free until tomorrow 5:00am. Overall, a very chill rotation with good OR experience. Got to learn where things are in the UIC OR. No overnight calls. Would come in on Saturday mornings to round with the Plastics resident, and the rest of the weekend is free. I personally had this rotation just before the OITE exam, so this rotation gave me a lot of time to study for the exam.

During our anesthesia rotation, we rotate with the regional block team at UIC. Regional anesthesia is an expanding field of operative medicine, specifically in Ortho. Its benefits include providing an alternative to general anesthesia and improved perioperative pain control with decreased narcotic use.

OR days start early, so the block team starts early. I’m usually up by 5:00 am, half sleep-walking myself to the fridge to inhale my overnight oats. Now that I’m more awake, I hop in the shower, pop my scrubs on, and I’m on my way. The drive is a quick one, only 5-10 minutes from downtown to UIC. I use this time to call my family back home (the time difference helps). I park in the Wood Street Parking Structure, which is connected directly to the Outpatient Care Center (OCC) and the remainder of the hospital. This comes in clutch during the winter months. After dropping my stuff off at the Ortho call room, I head down to meet the team in the preop block bay. First case is normally between 6:30 am and 7:30 am. This gives me plenty of time to set up the ultrasound machine and help the regional fellow prepare for the day. I then pull up Epic and check the OR status board. I try to help my co-residents get their day going by pre-opping Ortho patients (confirming consent is done, marking patients, prepping post-op orders and scripts).

The schedule for the day varies throughout the week. I’m usually helping with various blocks throughout the morning, from combined spinal epidurals (CSEs) for total knees and hips to supraclavicular blocks for hand and upper extremity cases. My role varies as well, from holding the ultrasound probe still to performing blocks myself. In between blocks, there’s plenty of time for snacking and grabbing coffee. The anesthesia team’s eating habits are truly a blessing and a curse!

Depending on the day, the afternoon may be light. I’m usually done with blocks between 12:00-2:00 pm. The rest of the day is what I make of it. If there’s Ortho cases running, I’d scrub in and get some valuable intern operative experience (the seniors are awesome at getting you involved, often handing over the entire case!). Other days, nice weather = beach day.

The anesthesia rotation helps us understand the intricacies of navigating the puzzle that is the preoperative bay. You learn what blocks are indicated for specific cases, how long these blocks take, and their postoperative efficacy. You learn to communicate with anesthesia to best expedite the OR day. And you get to operate. Hours-wise, it’s a golden rotation. Yeah, you get up early, but you’re done by early afternoon at the latest, and you work no weekends. Terrific intern rotation.

As an intern on trauma you can either be on 12-hr or 24-hr shifts. Pretty good rotation to get your hands wet with a lot of ortho trauma if you go for it.

5:00-5:15 AM

Wake up, make coffee, get ready, brush teeth, etc. Usually leave the house by 5:20-5:30 to make the trek to christ. Def listen to music on the way, gets you pumped up for the day. Commute takes 20-25min, really no traffic in the morning.

6:00 AM

Arrive for signout. You are intimately associated with the Surgical trauma ICU team, as they usually transfer patients to the trauma floor. Patient load varies depending on season, could be much more in the summer and less in the winter months. After signout, you split up patients with your team. After signout, you take the trauma floor phone from the overnight resident, you get calls about floor stuff, etc.

7:00 AM

Round on patients, can template notes. I like to eat brekky at this time after rounding on my patients. If the patient load isn’t heavy, you can have SECOND brekky! Also during the day, you respond to any traumas that come in. As the intern, you can either run a trauma if you like or type the note while the 2’s run the trauma.

10:00 AM

Usually rounds start. If a trauma comes in during rounds, you usually stay to finish while the 2nd years go to the trauma. Can be really short or really long based on the attending for the week and also patient load.

12PM

Don’t forget lunch. If the day is slow and there’s nothing going on with your patients, second lunch is on the table! As traumas come rolling in through the day, pay attention to the ortho ones that come in. Usually the ED and trauma team is really good about letting you do the ortho stuff, reducing fractures, dislocations, splinting, traction pins etc. They know you’re ortho and they let you get your hands wet. It’s also cool that you’re there with your co-residents who are on their Christ rotation, so if you’re doing stuff for the first time, they can show you the ropes which is pretty cool as an intern on an off-service rotation. You are also free to scrub in any interesting ortho cases throughout the day if it’s slow and you already wrapped up stuff with your patients.

Tuesdays/Fridays:

On Tuesdays and Fridays at 1PM, you have trauma clinic, which is a 5 minute walk down the street. You cover clinic with APN’s and the trauma attending on call that week. Clinic volume is variable, as some patients don’t show up. Mainly trauma follow-ups, suture removals, wound checks, etc.

5-6PM

If you’re on a 12-hr shift, you signout to the overnight trauma resident at this point. Go home, eat, sleep. If you’re on a 24-hr, skip ahead.

6PM-6AM

Eat dinner at some point. This is when the traumas come in mainly because everyone is driving home off work, and people for some reason like to go out at night and drink and fight and get shot. As the intern, you don’t have to show up to all the overnight traumas as they expect you to take care of stuff on the floor. But you can go and see if there’s any interesting things downstairs. And any emergent ortho cases that go overnight, you can scrub in!

6AM

Signout, go home, sleep (you’re post-call).

All in all, trauma is a busy but fun rotation. It’s what you make of it, can do a lot of ortho stuff that

can prepare you well.

ICU is a somewhat busy rotation with 12 hr shifts (6 am – 6 pm), 5x per week. We get Wednesday and either Saturday/Sunday off each week. It’s a good opportunity to learn basics about management of critically ill trauma patients while building rapport with the other specialties we see a bunch over the next 5 years such as EM and Gen Surg.

4:45 AM – Wake up, coffee, quick breakfast. Leave by 515-520 to make it to Christ. Commute of ~30 min without traffic. I live not too far from UIC which is convenient to get on the highway to get to any of our sites.

6:00 AM – Sign out with the Surgical Trauma ICU team and Trauma Floor team. Learn of night’s events for both ICU and Floor patients. Split up list of anywhere between 10-30 patients with APNs (1-2x day), Gen Surg PGY-2, EM PGY-2. Usually 4-6 people splitting up the list per day.

7:00 – 9:30 AM – After we split the list, I review prior day’s notes/updated labs/images on EMR. Seek out information from night nurse/oncoming nurse on your patients for the day. Usually carry around 3-6 patients, but could be more/less depending on census. Normally they like to give us patients with orthopedic issues which is nice. Then I round on my patients and write notes. We have some templates for progress notes for the day saved which makes it go pretty quick.

9:30 AM – Noon – During this time we round on every patient with the STIC team, Pharmacist and attending who rounds with you. We prepare plans systems-based and present each patient to attending while someone else on the team puts in order. The pharmacist who rounds usually will put in all medication orders which is a nice help.

Noon – 3:00 PM – After rounds I go down to the cafeteria to grab lunch. Then complete notes. Update patient list, focusing on the plan for your patients. Assist with new admissions. Follow up with consultants, discharge patients, other admin tasks.

3:00-6:00 PM – Remain available to STIC team for further help with administrative burden- also may have time to study relevant info in either ICU, Ortho or for Step 3. May run into other Ortho residents who can get you involved in cases, procedures if any are ongoing.

6-7 PM

Sign out to oncoming team consisting of APN and night STIC resident. Sign out consists of printing an updated list, reviewing important events from the day and actionable items for night team to follow up on.

Out of hospital by 7-730 most days.

Day in the life: the memoirs of an intern at Lutheran

Wake up at 4:50, got to take the dog out before I leave for work. Jump in the car at 5:30 and get to Lutheran by 5:55. The other residents are rolling in, it’s going to be a great day. At morning sign out we go over the new patients from overnight, we got a couple new cases for today. The chief splits up the list for rounds and I grab the phone and pager from the overnight resident before she heads out for the day.

After rounding and writing notes we hit the cafeteria for some team breakfast. Marc, one of the second year residents, is rambling on about something. I’m not really paying attention but I laugh anyways. Just as I’m finishing up my coffee I get a page from the emergency department: ankle fracture dislocation. I’ve done a couple ankle reductions but never by myself. I’ll try this one on my own. I call for the C-arm and get all my supplies as the ED attending starts conscious sedation. With a little manipulation I think I got back in place, we take a couple shots on fluoro to confirm. I feel like the man. I go back to the call room to bang out the note while I am waiting for the post reductions. At first glance of the xrays the ankle is subluxed posteriorly, how could the fluoros have lied to me? With a quick sigh I grab my sheers and head back down to the ED to take down the splint. We set everything up again, but this time I make absolutely sure that the ankle is aligned. Post reductions come back: an-a-tomic. I go back to the call room and Sapan, one of the other residents, is hanging out in between cases. Sapan has a nice beard, not as good as mine, but I still respect it. I get another page, this time it’s a horrible foot pus consult. I go back to the ED to examine the patient. He has an open wound probing down to bone. I order an MRI and vascular studies, we’ll admit him to medicine. A couple more hip fractures come through the ED and I get them tee’d up for surgery.

I finally get a little bit of downtime in between consults and I start to tidy some things up on the floor. I run into the ortho NP and have a nice little chat before I get a floor consult. It’s a rule out septic arthritis so I have to go immediately. The patient’s knee is tender and swollen, he has minimal range of motion with pain. His inflammatory markers are elevated and his xray shows some degenerative changes. I make him NPO and aspirate his knee. His fluid looks more inflammatory than septic, but we’ll find out soon enough. As I walk back to the call room I stop at 10 tower to take a quick glance at the world, it’s the small moments that count.

Before I realize it is already 20 minutes past five and the on call resident is finishing up his case. After he’s done he pops in the call room for sign out. The Fluid analysis is still pending but it should be back soon. Other than that there is nothing for him to follow up on. I hand him the pager and phone then head out for the day. It’s time to go walk the dog.

Note: The intern experience at UIC can greatly vary depending on the Attending schedule and the number of interns currently on site. Below is an example of a day in the life at UIC and the general intern weekly schedule. The final weekly schedule is determined by the chief resident and shared via a Google sheet to all residents. The interns spend most of their time in clinic, but a good amount of OR days are added into the schedule when able.

​The mothership! The Home base! Where all the magic happens.

5:30 AM Wake up, coffee, get dressed, coffee, get to the U, coffee. Check the email signout from the on-call senior resident about any admissions overnight.

6:10 AM I consult the google sheet to double check the inpatients that need to be seen. Team rounds start in about 20 min and I have to get some work done beforehand. I grab the nearest available computer on 5 East, and begin to update the list with pertinent labs, vitals, updated room numbers, etc.

7:00 AM UIC interns are responsible for day-call from 7am – 5PM. I use the UIC paging service to transfer the pager to my own personal one as I wait. My service’s chief resident arrives for rounds on 5 east. We split the list and get cracking. After rounds, we take a few minutes to write the progress notes, input orders, and prepare for the rest of the day.

8:00 AM – 4:30 PM Once in clinic, thankfully, there is coffee and a spread of food waiting for the residents. I pour myself another cup of coffee, crush the oatmeal I requested last night, and I double check that all of today’s XRs were ordered. The camaraderie at UIC is palpable, and our small traditions make the days enjoyable. Laughing hysterically at Dr. Chmell and Frank’s (our casting technician) jokes and frequent life lessons from Dr. Goldberg are daily occurrences. Similarly, as your time at UIC goes on you begin to respond, sometimes exclusively, Dr. Goldberg’s (optional) nicknames, instinctively become excited around 10:30 AM for Dr. Mejia’s clinic wing break, and gibberish like SNACKAROOKO will be of the utmost importance. Despite its frequent light nature, UIC clinic can be a whirlwind. We are responsible for assessing patients’ histories and radiographs, formulating plans, assisting with casting and splints, all the necessary documentation, as well as responding to pages from nurses and other services. The attending schedules are often slammed, and the intern must help keep the day on track. Lunch breaks (often provided to us by the attendings) are usually spent catching up when behind or documenting the morning encounters. The pager at UIC will go off pretty consistently throughout the day regarding current inpatient statuses, discharge info, etc. Most of the pager duties are handled in between patients from clinic. All non urgent consults are typically seen after clinic is over. Urgent consults from the ED are one of the few reasons to leave during clinic. We see patients typically until around 4:30 PM.

4:30 PM. Clinic typically begins to wind down. I focus on tying up loose ends from clinic as well as the remaining documentation that needs to be completed. I go see the few inpatient consults we have received throughout the day, and text the on-call attending the pertinent information and imaging. I type the consult notes while I wait for the senior resident to finish up with cases. Once all the consult notes are completed, I sign out to the senior resident and transfer the pager.

5:30-6:00 PM. Dinner, Gym, TV, and make sure correct radiographs are ordered for clinic tomorrow.

Today I woke up around 5:00 am, showered quick, threw on some scrubs and UIC Orthopedics Under Armour ¼ zip (pictured), made some coffee (went with Big Shoulders brand – support local and all) and got in my car for the 30 minute drive down to Christ. I typically listen to Spittin’ Chiclets podcast (great hockey podcast with two former NHL players) to get the day started. Got up to the call room around 5:50 am, dropped off my bag and went to meet the NP who told me which patients to round on for the day. Had 3 TKA and 2 THA I operated on the day before to see, all were doing well and dressings looked good so nothing to change.

​Fortunately for this rotation the NP writes all the notes so I went down to the cafeteria to get some breakfast. My go to is a sausage, egg, cheese on an english muffin with two fried eggs and 2 sausage patties, and because I am blessed with an excellent metabolism from my parents I grab a donut as well. Two other residents join and we sit around chatting until 7 am when we go up to the conference room for fracture conference where we review all trauma cases from the week with 5-6 attendings. The PGY-3 from the DO program is presenting today, we get through about 8 cases before the attendings have to head out. I head down to the OR lounge around 8 am where there is free food and drinks all day. I grab some corn pops and a yogurt to eat while the patient is going to sleep, gotta fuel up for the day. First incision is around 8:15 am. Today we have 5 TKA and 3 THA in two rooms. I do one room with the PGY-5 on service takes the other room. I grab a free turkey sandwich and chocolate chip cookie for lunch from the surgeon lounge after my 3rd case.

My room finishes around 4:30 pm, but I’m on call tonight so I head back up to the call room. I check in with the ED intern who is on service who is about to go see a trauma consult MVC with a subtrochanteric femur fracture. The intern staffs it with the attending and writes the note while I gather the supplies to put in the distal femur traction pin. I’ve done quite a few of these at this point so I walk the intern through the steps and let them do it since they were interested. It’s now 5:30 pm, intern goes home, so I go and grab some dinner before the consults start rolling in. Not a big fan of cafeteria fish so I fall back on a turkey burger and fries. I use one of the meal cards they give us for being on call so I don’t have to pay anything. The rest of the night wasn’t too bad, only had 6 consults and most were before 1 am so I got a few hours sleep. I was even able to get in a few episodes of Friday Night Lights which is my current binge show and watch highlights of the NHL games from the night. Alarm goes off around 5:30 am, and I text the attending all the consults from the night as well as which cases I added on. There was one intertroch, one tibial plateau, and the subtroch which the resident on call today will take care of, but I have to add them on to the OR. All the joint patients left yesterday, so no one to round on. I grab some breakfast (same thing as yesterday – don’t mess with what works) with two other residents as well as the intern who is rotating through the ICU for the month and I’m on my way back home around 6:30 am, and get home at 7:15 with the beginning of the morning rush hour traffic.

Usually wake up at or a little before 5:00am, hit a quick shower, throw on scrubs, and hit the road for a 25-30 minute drive up to Lutheran. On the drive I always listen to chicago sports talk radio to get my fix in. My go to is usually 670 the score which lines up with Mully and Haugh’s 5 at 5 segment during my drive. Make it up to the conference room a few minutes early and chat with my co-residents before signout at 6am where the previous nights on call resident reviews the new patients and any pertinent inpatient updates. The chief resident then doles out the rounding assignments, anywhere from 2-8 patients per resident. Today I have 4 TKA post ops from the cases that I scrubbed yesterday. Everyone is doing great and getting closer to discharge so we are off to a good start for the day. I update my attending on the patients and write my notes. Then it’s off to team brekky (free breakfast provided by the hospital every Tuesday and Thursday) to fuel up for the day. Today we got a nice spread of scrambled eggs, french toast, and bacon. Needless to say morale is high. Then it is off to surgery for the day, on the schedule today we have 4 TKA’s and 2 THA’s in two rooms first case starts around 8am. I am able to sneak a quick PB&J in for lunch after the 4th case of the day.

​We finish cases a little after 5pm, but I am on call tonight so I head up to the call room to check in with the intern who is updating the list and finishing a consult note. Things are under control so run to the cafe to grab dinner quick before the night gets going. I take full advantage of the meal tickets provided for call shifts so I grab a chicken breast sandwich, sobe, and some trail mix. While eating in the call room I sign out with the intern to see what is new from the day and what to follow up on. No work or consults are pending at this time so I get to start with a clean slate which is always optimal. The first hour or so is uneventful with just a few calls from the floor to address, so I take care of the discharge items for the patients I operated on today with the hope of saving the intern some heartbreak tomorrow. First consults start rolling in around 6:30pm and remain steady until about midnight. After finishing up consults in the ED I head back up to the call room where I update the patient list adding all the new consults, removing those discharged throughout the day, and updating room numbers that have changed. After that I finish my consult notes and double check that all surgical patients are pre-op’d for the morning. With all my work caught up I head to bed and am able to get some sleep with just a few nurse calls mixed in the rest of the night. Overall, it is a pretty mild night of call with 5 consults including a distal radius fracture reduction, a pediatric both bone forearm fracture reduction, and two hip fractures. I wake up to my alarm at 5:30am where I double check the list to ensure nothing else needs cleaned up and print lists for the team at signout. I text the on call attending to review with him what came in overnight. Then I give signout at 6am and hand off the pager/phone to intern before rounding the 6 remaining joints patients inhouse for my service. I head home a little after 7am and traffic is still manageable at this time and I make it home just before 8am.

5:00am-5:30am – Wake up, shower, make breakfast. On OR days I generally eat breakfast at home, something quick like yogurt or a few scrambled eggs. After putting a Nutri-Grain or Clif Bar in my bag to save for later between cases, I fill up my coffee mug and get ready for the drive to NorthShore. The drive is about 20-25 minutes long in the morning. Usually I listen to my “Discover Weekly” playlist on Spotify and check out new songs, or listen to an audio lecture. Last year a few of the residents stumbled upon a great website with ortho audio lectures called Cornerstone Courses, which has been a nice way to pass the time during drives.

6:30am-7:30am – I get to NorthShore a few minutes before 6:30am. Parking at NorthShore is free for residents and right in front of the main entrance of the hospital. I walk inside and head to one of our conference rooms for morning lecture; generally we have a lecture each weekday morning given by various attendings. Typically we receive hand lectures on Mondays, foot & ankle lectures on Tuesdays, pediatric lectures on Thursdays, and fracture conference on Fridays with 2-4 trauma attendings (on Wednesdays we have protected time for our weekly UIC conference from 6-10am). The attending lectures are high quality and we’re lucky to have them each morning!

7:30am-6:00pm – OR with Dr. Roberts. Dr. Roberts is our pediatric orthopedic attending at NorthShore and we have a dedicated rotation with him as PGY2s. Generally first case start time is 7:30am, so on OR days I leave morning lecture a few minutes early in order to make it to the first case on time. Today we have a few hardware removals, a guided growth case, a congenital trigger thumb release, a lateral condyle ORIF, and a femoral shaft fracture that came in overnight which we added on – should be a great day.

6:00pm onwards – After our last case, I head over to our signout room on the second floor of the hospital since I’m on call tonight. At NorthShore we are fortunate to have dedicated orthopedic PAs who are in the hospital 24/7. During the day they manage the floor. At 6:00pm I receive signout on pertinent events that happened during the day and on anything to be aware of for the night. Call here is home call. There are 2-3 orthopedic PAs in-house overnight with the floor phone and consult pager. As the on call resident I head home after signout and am called only if there is an operative consult. For example, last week on call Dr. Roberts and I took care of a patient with a septic hip overnight. It’s hard to predict how often we go in during call, but it works out to roughly 1 out of every 4 or 5 calls. After signout I grab dinner at the Chick-fil-A across the street from the hospital and head home for the night.

Today, I woke up at 5:45am, threw on some sweatpants and a Cubs shirt, headed out the door. Every Friday, I reward myself with a stop at the neighborhood Starbucks. I use the app to preorder so my iced coffee and banana bread are waiting for me when I run in. Next, I drive 20mins to Shriner’s. Typically, I like to listen to upbeat music in the morning to get me hyped for the day, today it’s Marshmello. Get to the locker room and change into scrubs by 6:45am. Then I head downstairs to the conference room.

​Every morning at 7am we have either an educational or indications conference. Today is postop conference where we review all the imaging from the cases performed during the week. I pull up my Xrays for my cases which included a tibial osteotomy with Ilizarov frame application for fibular hemimelia, a hip spica cast application for developmental dysplasia of the hip, and a FD rod placement for a fracture in a patient with osteogenesis imperfecta.

After the conference, we get ready for weekly walking rounds. For walking rounds, all orthopedic/PMR attending physicians, residents, PAs, physical therapists, nursing staff, and social workers round on each of the current inpatients together. I present my patient’s hospital course and we all discuss the progress/plan with input from the patient and their parents. It’s a great example of teamwork that happens for every child’s care. After rounds, I stop by the cafeteria and pick up some fruit then head over to the gait lab. Every week we have a gait lecture with Miriam, our PhD Kinesiologist. It’s a great hour where we learn gait mechanics, the technology available to capture gait, and how to understand the data we obtain from motion analysis studies. Today’s lecture is focusing on gait in cerebral palsy. We review videos from several case examples, analyze their gait, and evaluate what potential surgical treatment they could benefit from.

Next, I head up to clinic where the attending and physician assistant have already gotten started. I jump in and head over to the cast room to see a patient who is following up for their second Ponseti cast for clubfoot. The PA and I alternate seeing patients so we both have time to dictate/review imaging between patients. We take an hour lunch break, and I watch a bit of a US Open tennis match. I head back upstairs to finish up the afternoon clinic by 4pm. I signout to the resident on call, change, and head out for the day. I drive over to Parlor Pizza on Division St. to meet up with some of my classmates for dinner. What a great day!

I woke up around 6:45 a.m. today and made a quick breakfast of strictly protein to make sure I don’t lose my gains from all the bicep curls I did yesterday. I then jump in my car and make the 10 minute drive down to UIC from Wicker Park/West Town where all the cool residents live. I always stop at Dunkin on the way and get a large coffee with blueberry flavoring. I have one postop hip fracture patients to see from the day before I head to clinic with Dr. Goldberg which starts around 8:30 am. Dr. Goldberg aka BG is big on food in clinic, so we have our weekly panera breakfast order waiting for me when I get there.

​
We’ve got about 60 patients coming in today to be seen between me and the three other residents (Epic, DJ Krish, and Dondo – nicknames are also important to BG) in his clinic today so we get started. Dr. Goldberg arrives a little after 9:00 am once we have some patients “ready to roll” and not “figuring things out” as he puts it. Rule #1 is never take him to the wrong room or you will be publicly shamed for months. Morning clinic goes smooth, but most stressful part of the day for me is ensuring the lunch order arrives smoothly and without error or delay at risk of again facing public shame and torment. Safe bet is the mexican restaurant Chilangos down the street, arrives correct and on time so I’m spared for the day. See a few more patients before Dr. Goldberg decides he needs a “snackarookoo” and we put together a list of food items for someone to go grab from the cafeteria…you can’t treat patients if you’re hypoglycemic. We have a few more patients coming in the afternoon but we have an add-on elbow terrible triad for after clinic which I head over to the operating theater to pre-op and setup the case. Dr. Goldberg is great at walking us through the case and involving us early on so it’s a great experience. Case finishes up around 6:30, I throw some orders in, dictate the operative report (very difficult at first but after a few years you get pretty good at it), and head on home. It’s a pretty nice day out so a few other residents come over for a grill-out to start the weekend. Real good!

There is a lot of responsibility that comes with being the chief resident at UIC, but four years of residency has prepared us for the task. As the Joints chief resident, I make the daily schedule and call schedule for all 11 residents at UIC. I also coordinate with the interns and residents on call to make sure all call/add-on cases are covered. Finally, I run the joints service at the University. This involves evaluating joints consults, seeing hip and knee patients in clinic, preoperative planning for upcoming surgical cases, rounding on joints inpatients, and of course operating. In terms of preoperative planning, we get a truly valuable experience in this regard. We even get to coordinate with the orthopedic implant sales reps to ensure the equipment we need is present in the OR, a skill that will serve us well when beginning practice. A great part about our program is our attendings treat us as junior colleagues and allow us to participate in the decision making process of the case, which begins with deciding what implants we need and what we need to have on backup. One of the most rewarding parts of this rotation is teaching the other residents in the clinic and OR, especially the joints PGY2 with whom I work very closely and assist them in walking through each case.

My day-to-day schedule largely depends on whether I am in the OR or clinic but always starts with rounding on the joints team inpatients. I then make my way to clinic or the OR with the Joints PGY2. When we are done seeing our clinic patients or finished with our surgical cases, I head home. I take my pager since I am on senior backup call and am available should the junior on call have any questions or if there is an overnight surgical case.

Mon – rounds, 6:30 am joint/sports indications conference; 8am-4pm joints clinic with Dr. Chmell

Tues – rounds; joints OR with Dr. Chmell

Wed – rounds; 6am-10am resident academic conference; joints clinic with Dr. Gonzalez

Thurs – rounds; joints OR with Dr. Gonzalez

Fri – rounds; joints morning clinic with Dr. Gonzalez; afternoon free for add-on cases or for making next week’s schedule, preoperative planning, contacting implant sales representatives for the following week