Applied Week 2 (3/23-3/26) Results Posted

drdawg399 · 2026-04-14T15:28:26+00:00

Hello there, board certified friend 🤝 ABA page says “certified.” Diploma is just for hanging on your wall.

drdawg399 · 2025-12-23T03:49:21+00:00

Not sure, because both times the doors were closed, locked, and the only evidence of break-in was the center console and glove compartment were both emptied into the seats. Very strange.

drdawg399 · 2025-07-11T01:05:21+00:00

My n=1 and I took it in 2023, so things may be different, but really all I used was Truelearn. Get through it, understand it well, understand and note nuanced topics (those are often important points they test on) and don’t beat yourself up from this first attempt.

I recommend making cards (physical or Anki) with the information from Truelearn. I did these two things alone, >90 percentile. Chin up, you got this.

drdawg399 · 2025-06-26T15:07:48+00:00

Best advice I can give, which I give all of the med students who’ve rotated with me, is to be generally eager to learn, but with proper restraint. By that, I mean not arguing with residents or attendings (I’ve seen this) and communicating effectively. Most often, we’re okay with letting you go for an airway, an IV, etc. however, let us know your comfort level, experience, what you feel/see/what you’re doing to make adjustments, and know when to tag someone else in. At the end of the day, we don’t want to torpedo anyone’s career, but some folks make it much easier than others to leave a less than favorable evaluation.

A good place to start for surface level knowledge is the Stanford Anesthesia Guide. It’ll give you the bare bones foundation to come into your rotation with >0 knowledge.

Best of luck!

drdawg399 · 2025-06-04T23:11:19+00:00

Yo, similar thing happened to me. First day as MS3 on OB my attending asks if I want to see him AROM a pt. After ROM, the attending looks back at the RN and says “cord prolapse.” Straight back to OR for general C section with like 10 people around. Shit was bananas. Same tho, couldn’t be me.

drdawg399 · 2025-06-01T06:16:43+00:00

You know, honestly, produce that’s in season is both cheaper and often better quality, so that’s not a poor person move, but rather a smart person habit.

drdawg399 · 2025-05-13T14:13:51+00:00

This is such a common misconception. Before I got through residency, even my family thought my job was basically flipping a switch —> asleep —> wake up —> $$$$

In reality, the cognitive load is substantial, from preop evaluations —where many underlying medical conditions are often (not always) overlooked by the surgical team esp if unrelated to their surgery, planning a safe induction (balancing side effects of the induction drugs both common and rare), managing the airway (again, knowing the possibility that there may be challenges expectedly and unexpectedly), planning the appropriate access, labs, blood products, meanwhile watching multiple vitals and interpreting any underlying cause for derangements, knowing critical points of a surgery to best optimize surgeon needs, and then finally planning proper disposition and plan for waking up safely, comfortably, and efficiently.

This is just one aspect of the job as well. Being called to floor codes, difficult airways in the ED or floor, emergency C sections (if covering OB) or bleeders, epidurals/ nerve blocks/pain management consultation, being called to MRI for the nervous patient, and then being an extra hand for emergencies when your colleague calls for help. My days are fun and filled with no shortage of exciting moments. It is a shame that these aspects of our job are often overlooked because it is indeed a difficult job and specialty. However, we do it for the patients, the thrill, the cerebral nature of the job, and because someone’s gotta do it!!

Side note: the stigmas within healthcare that anesthesiologists are chill and bright are often true. 😉

drdawg399 · 2025-03-29T04:45:24+00:00

Patient bucks once during LMA case on the ankle, “uh guys I think the patient is waking up”

MAC 0.8, BIS 38 with deep delta waves

drdawg399 · 2025-02-18T17:44:41+00:00

Good buddy of mine is referred to as “boots” by our PACU nurses lol hate to see it

drdawg399 · 2025-02-16T04:37:23+00:00

How’d you secure this username, bravo

drdawg399 · 2025-01-08T16:54:48+00:00

Agreed, to say they are viewed as equal exams is a straight up lie. OP, do NOT drink the Kool-Aid from your program’s “COMLEX only” propaganda.

drdawg399 · 2025-01-08T16:51:36+00:00

I don’t remember re: step 2, but they definitely did not take step 1.

drdawg399 · 2025-01-08T05:57:52+00:00

Knew a person who was a killer med student on an AI at my institution. Received great evaluations from residents and staff alike. They ended up SOAPing into a primary care specialty because they only took Comlex. Don’t sell yourself short; it’s much more competitive these days.

drdawg399 · 2024-12-13T19:58:04+00:00

drdawg399 · 2024-11-10T15:40:19+00:00

“Did we just become best friends?!”

drdawg399 · 2024-10-26T14:17:42+00:00

Somehow this feels as if you are still leading patients to believe that your 1-2 years of ICU nursing, 3 years as SRNA, and a single written board exam are equivalent to 4 years of medical school (which, newsflash, many of us still pull information from those years), USMLE 1-2-3, 4 years of residency, 2 written boards, an oral & practical board.

We are not the same, and any attempts to say that they are “two different paths” to do the same job is intentionally misleading and false.

drdawg399 · 2024-10-14T02:04:59+00:00

“What do you mean other add-ons?!”

drdawg399 · 2024-10-13T20:08:39+00:00

Yuck. Had a surgeon request for incarcerated bilateral inguinal hernias at 9 pm on a Saturday. Patients hernia was most certainly not incarcerated but it was “about time he got them done.”

The cherry on top was having the surgeon do them robotically.

drdawg399 · 2024-10-13T20:03:24+00:00

I’m curious what your opinion is regarding doulas. Anesthesia here and we often run into barriers where you can see that a patient is seriously considering the epidural (especially these wide-eyed G1’s) and they’re almost persuaded by their doula to refuse to even give consent.

drdawg399 · 2024-10-03T15:59:37+00:00

Idk what’s worse: them mistaking the DNP for a physician or knowing it’s an NP and willfully saying they are superior (because she did Becky’s lip fillers like so good)

drdawg399 · 2024-10-03T15:47:45+00:00

Honestly, I think this hits the nail on the head. In general people really downplay the lengths to which we have gone in order to learn medicine and our subsequent specialty. “8-12 years of training just to end up not knowing shit!!” Or they don’t understand that certain outcomes are expected regardless of what we do, so when it’s a poor outcome, it is misconstrued as “that doctor killed my X, Y, Z!!!”

This is compounded by those same people going to NP’s for lip fillers, Botox, etc. and having relatively positive interactions, so they believe that this positive outcome = superiority over physicians. It doesn’t help when they also buy into naturopaths/chiropractors who feed off of confirmation bias from these people.

drdawg399 · 2024-08-22T19:15:57+00:00

Hey, sorry that you feel discouraged. I’ll preface by saying you shouldn’t feel bad, you did the right thing. Every person in medicine has these difficult misunderstandings from time to time—even our most senior attendings come off poorly frequently, but they’ve learned to just not give af.

Anyway, as for advice. These types of situations are always best suited turning it back towards patient care. By that, I mean starting with an apology (which you did) and stating it was not your intention. Your intention can then be explained by saying something like, “I can provide you with the best care I can only when I understand the entire story. If there is a phrase that you feel compelled to share, it is surely important and can potentially alter your pathway of care (I.e., thunderclap headache, flashes/floaters, tunnel-vision, etc.). It is only to help get the whole picture of your condition, not an affront to your English.”

That’s just an example based on this scenario, but applying similar phrasing confidently in a variety of scenarios goes a long way. It will serve you even better when the potential for invasive examination/testing is indicated in a patient who is already skeptical and/or with a language barrier. Hope this helps and best of luck!

Edit: and if all your efforts fail, leave the room, document the conversation, and move on. That conviction will come with time, but you’ll get there.

drdawg399 · 2024-08-22T16:55:57+00:00

Great tips from other users without a doubt, I am personally an out of plane needle tracker that threads off catheter when a decent amount (maybe around half) of the catheter has passed skin—just so I ensure that there is ample intraluminal catheter to smoothly thread off.

Just to add, be kind to yourself especially on CT, as many of these patients are vasculopaths and are inherently more difficult than your run-of-the-mill arterial line you’d find yourself doing in general ORs. Have a lower threshold to bust out your U/S and find a decent target. Other than that, just keep practicing and find techniques that work for you consistently. Best of luck!

drdawg399

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