Adult Ambulatory: Halfway through my first clerkship

Time flies when you're having fun. It's hard to believe that I'm already halfway through my first clinical rotation, Adult Ambulatory Care (AAC). A lot of people have asked me, "What does Adult Ambulatory mean, anyways?" I confess that I wasn't exactly sure, myself, before this clerkship began. Adult Ambulatory is outpatient doctor's office care.

Fourteen of my classmates are in AAC with me. Everyone is placed at their own site, and each site has its own character. A friend of mine was placed with a solo-practice physician where it's just the doctor, one nurse, and my medical student friend. Another classmate of mine was placed at an outpatient clinic in the VA hospital, which has a much more hectic atmosphere.

I was placed at Westside Clinic, which is a satellite clinic of Denver Health. It serves a socioeconomically disadvantaged population, and a large percentage of patients only speak Spanish.


Because of the nature of the doctors' schedules, I don't have one specific doctor who is mentoring me throughout this one-month rotation but instead follow whichever doctor is covering triage for a given shift. This is a stark contrast from my friend's solo-practice experience. So far, I have followed around about a half-dozen doctors, most of them for several shifts. All of my attending physicians are very nice, fun to work with, and invested in helping me improve my clinical skills.

At first, I was uncertain how I would be evaluated by so many mentors. One doctor is primarily responsible for overseeing my education at Westside; all the other doctors provide feedback to that primary mentor, and they synthesize that feedback into a single evaluation. This has meant a little bit of extra work and stress on my part forging good working relationships with many different attendings, but in the end I'm glad for the experience. Each one of them has their own particular style of interacting with patients and preferences of how they want me to present patients to them. I think that this has given me more versatility in the way I communicate with my supervisors.

My schedule is much more luxurious than I could have hoped for. I was expecting to work crazy 'round-the-clock hours, but it turns out that I am essentially working 8am-5pm. When I show up earlier than 8am, the building is locked, and I wait around like a fool for someone with a badge to open the door. I do often stay later than 5pm to read or catch up on my notes, but most of the doctors are gone by 5:30.

I am very aware that my schedule will change dramatically when I start my Internal Medicine rotation in June. But for now, I'm going to have fun and enjoy it while I can!