First week of 6 12 hour shifts under the belt at the new hospital. Well, 5 shifts, as the tradition of getting violently ill every time I start a new hospital and exposed to the local flora of disease held true and I had to call out for one. But holy hell what a different setting that last year. Last year, was a major urban academic hospital in one of the countries biggiest cities. This year it’s a community hospital, with ER and Medicine as the only residencies present, set in a community that doesn’t exactly have health insurance. So gone are the handful of guys every night who were too drunk to get into the homeless shelter who just want a sandwich, replaced with people who haven’t seen a doctor in 10 years and now have some serious pathology going on.  The learning curve has been amazing. I felt like I learned more in this past week then I did in a whole month last year. The best thing? Maybe it’s cause it’s a real hospital, maybe it’s because we’re R2′s now, but we’re treated like colleagues by the attendings and not 4th year med students, which was the case last year.  And it’s a pretty great feeling. I feel like I’m a “working” doctor for the first time, finally getting an idea of how this is going to all work out in the real world.