The Nerd's Guide to Pre-Rounding. a Medical Student's Manual to Wards

This is a how-to guide for medical students moving from the classroom to the clinical/hospital setting; a particularly stressful transition in a student-physician’s career. This handbook is made up of short, easily digestible passages that advise students on everything from reading an EKG or chest x-ray to tips on dealing with difficult residents and what to wear on wards. Passages are peppered with light-hearted anecdotes to bolster the spirits of students intimidated and overwhelmed by their responsibility as fledgling doctors. The handbook has been developed by Dr Richard Loftus, who wrote the first version of this guide after his 3rd year at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). It contains appendices of useful information, including a PDF file of full size forms that can be accessed from our website.

• This book offers pertinent personal and clinical advice to third and fourth year medical students, in a quick read, accessible format • Includes appendices of useful clinical information that is regularly needed and used by these junior officers
• Includes a number of important patient management forms on PDF files that the student can print out (full size) by accessing our website

Contents

1. Warning: career ahead; 2. The job of the medical student; 3. Job performance: the big ten; 4. Gear down: white coats, stethoscopes, and other fashion accessories; 5. Pre-rounding and scut basics; 6. Knowledge management: if I only had a brain …; 7. Pimping and the art of self-defense; 8. Presentations: ‘Here there Be Dragons’; 9. Making the grade: emotional intelligence trumps all; 10. Team management for the MS3; 11. Morale management; 12. Soapbox - physicians and the snare of egoism; Acknowledgements; Appendix 1: Tasty bits - good things to know up front; Appendix 2: Dispo dancing; Appendix 3: Patient data collection card templates; Appendix 4: Daily progress note template; Appendix 5: The (don’t) panic pages: for the Sub-I; Appendix 6: Eliciting the code status: a very important job that we doctors do very badly; Appendix 7: Personal finance for the medical trainee; Appendix 8: Using pubmed.