Rotation Reflection
Overall, my experience at South Shore Family Medicine went well. I was greeted by Roseann and Dr. Vitoulis, and they informed me of what a regular day at the office was like. We saw about 15 patients per day. Dr. Vitoulis would bring us into the room with the patient while he did the physical exam. If there is an interesting finding, for example, we had a patient with leukoplakia; he would try to show us.
Dr. Vitoulis did not let us do much as students. I asked him multiple times if I could examine a patient by myself, but he said he’d rather wait until “it isn’t busy”, but it wasn’t all that busy. It seems that he wanted to teach, but he did not feel comfortable leaving students alone with patients. This was discouraging because I wanted to practice my physical exam skills, consulting patients, forming differentials, and thinking of which medications to prescribe to my patient.
Also, the company is short-staffed on doctors, so the office was only open 3 days a week some weeks. This led to me being short on hours. Luckily I asked if I could do some at the Valley Stream office, but I still was not given much experience.
I made an effort to write down all of my patients and create short HPIs for my own practice. I also examined Dr. Vitoulis’ systematic method of physical examination from head to toe, and I plan to implement that in my future practice.
Overall I don’t think this is a place where students should continue to rotate. I’m hoping I’m not at a disadvantage compared to the other students who did Family Medicine at another site this rotation.
