Radiology @ Duke

I started Radiology at Duke this am. It was great - the only way it could've been a better first day is if I hadn't gotten sick over the weekend. The people here are really nice, and were really excited to have a visiting student (I'm the only visitor here - as opposed to at UNC, where at least half the students in the ED last month were visitors), which is kind of odd....I haven't seen any other visiting students wandering around either....hmm....Anyways, it was a good first day, and I already feel more competent reading x-rays.

I am on the Neuro service this week. They have such a big department here they don't divide it up like most normal hospitals, into CT, ultrasound, MRI, etc. They have Neuro, Chest, Abdomen, GI, etc.. So I will be learning about all things Neuro this week.

We spent almost all of today looking at chest x-rays which are about the hardest thing in radiology to learn how to do. One awesome thing about this rotation is that we get 3 hours of lectures each day, which is great, considering that as students, there really isn't any conceivable way we can contribute to patient care yet. So we might as well spend it getting great lectures (which they were). My favorite part was the lunchtime "hot seat" x-ray conference, where they said right up front that there would be NO calling on students. You can see why I enjoyed it so much! The cafeteria has decent coffee here (as opposed to UNC), and the hospital kind of looks like a castle - how much better can it get?