My 5throtation – Ambulatory care was by far my favorite rotation. I got to do more procedures the first day than I did in all of my previous rotations. My preceptor was a great guide and provided me with the confidence I needed in being able to see patients on my own, form my own diagnosis and come up with a management plan. Most of the patients complained of sore throat, UTI symptoms, rashes and orthopedic injuries. I got to see a diverse population in terms of complaints and ages. I started getting more comfortable in performing physical examinations, sutures/suture removal, splinting, cerumen irrigation, injections etc. My preceptor also encouraged me to read EKGs and X-rays before getting the report from radiologist. It was overall a very comfortable environment and I got a lot of autonomy.
Ambulatory care is a little tricky in that many patients didn’t have primary care doctors and so they’d come in complaining of a headache and a ridiculously high blood pressure yet have never seen a doctor for HTN, are unaware of their HTN and therefore are not medically controlled/managed for their HTN. We’d often send these patients out to the emergency room depending on how high their blood pressure is but it is very important to document everything and tell patients to follow up with the appropriate specialty.
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