After finishing my medicine elective, I wanted to revisit some time within a subspecialty that brought me into medicine, gastroenterology. I was first introduced to medicine as a career in middle school, when I got sick and had to have a bowel resection. I started on a mission to try help patients with gastrointestinal disorders, and I was especially excited to try to help children and adolescents. My career path has changed since I first envisioned this dream, adding on years for additional research training and learning more about adult medicine and the comorbidities of gastrointestinal disease. Regardless, I am still very interested in gastroenterology and digestive disorders - so I was thrilled to have this opportunity to learn about the clinical side that corresponds to some of my research work.

My GI elective was on the pediatric side. It started with one week of inpatient GI service on the wards. Basically, what this means is one week of time in the hospital caring for kids that were hospitalized for their gastroenterology disorders, like a flare of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), for example.  It is always an honor to care for patients and families admitted to the hospital. This is such a hard time for them, and there is a big opportunity to make an impact on their time in the hospital.

After my week on the pediatric service, I went over to the adult side and was on service with Dr. Binion.  Dr. Binion primarily sees patients with IBD and severe nutritional difficulties, he was also my primary research advisor. He has an extremely busy service and, well, his patients love him. He also gives them ample time and counseling which they absolutely adore and value. I was able to learn a lot from his approach to patient care including, repetition, simplification, and slow, soft tone conversation. I hope to add this to my clinical skill set as I advance in my career.

After my weeks on inpatient gastroenterology, I finished the clerkship in pediatric outpatient clinics, learning about pediatric hepatology  and intestinal disorders. The differences between peds and adults was surprising. Hepatology is an entirely different world. I also had the chance to attend a variety of lectures, lunch talks and didactics session to round out my exposure. It was a nice elective and definitely helped to provide some career clarity - which I always appreciate. I would recommend checking this elective out, a lot of practice knowledge!  After this, it was back to the medicine floors for my Acting Internship... more to come!

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