What’s in a title?

My ID badge now says “Attending Physician.”

I guess that’s my title now.

Last month I worked two hospitalist shifts. A week later I followed it up with 7 MOD shifts.

As a hospitalist I was responsible for my entire set of patients. I did get to work with one resident who was spending the month doing a hospitalist elective.

During the MOD shifts, I was the attending on one of our Internal Medicine teaching teams. I had a senior resident and two interns.

It is definitely a new feeling to have “the last say.” All my previous experiences on inpatient medicine had been as a resident. There were always things that I deferred to the attending. Like discharges home, for example.

As the attending, I had the final say. And it was a very different experience.

Serving as the attending on the teaching service was interesting as well. I remember frequently paging my senior residents to check in and make sure they did certain things. And as I did that, a light in my head turned on. I realized why I used to get several pages from attendings as they wanted to make sure I followed through on certain things.

When you have other people taking care of patients under your license and supervision, you start to pay attention.

Part of my job as a Chief Resident is doing a cetain number of MOD shifts. Seven shifts down. Looking forward this upcoming year. I have a lot to learn about medicine still. I have a lot to learn about teaching residents and students. I also have a lot of fun in store.

Stick around, dear reader. This should be a fun year.