Page 4 - Healthcare News Jan/Feb 2022

Learning Curves
Dr. Dennis Zambrano
is looking forward to getting back to elec- tive cases after the state shuttered most of them during a COVID surge.
For Medical Residents, Pandemic Adds Intrigue
o the Experience
tD
ous.
She’s never been a resident when there wasn’t a global pandemic going on, so she obviously doesn’t have anything to com- pare her current experience to.
By GEORGE O’BRIEN
“We’re going to be back full force with our elective cases. And that’s big; that translates into more OR time.”
“We usually have half a day each week where we have lectures — it’s dedicated education time instead of being in clinic or on the floor of the hospital; we get to go in the conference room and just have lectures, look at cases and things, and be with our groups and be with our peers and kind of bond,” she explained. “But we really didn’t get to do that because we weren’t allowed to have big meetings during
the pandemic; we got
to do a few weeks when
r. Taylor Bates started by stating the obvi-
Still, she acknowledged that life for all the residents at Bay- state Medical Center, the region’s teaching hospital, and the sum of their experiences — from the initial interviews with hospital staff as part of the match process to their current rotations — is far different than it would have been, say, three years ago.
Indeed, those interviews were conducted remotely, said Bates and other first-year residents we spoke with. They were helpful, they said, but certainly not the same as traveling to those hospi- tals in person, meeting staff, and getting a good feel for the facil- ity and its culture. Meanwhile, since her residency began, many of the learning sessions have been conducted via Zoom, said Bates, a pediatric resident, noting that she longs for in-person learning, and is hopeful it can happen soon.
things calmed down, before Delta and before Omicon, but since Omicron, we haven’t been able to meet in person. We do Zoom meetings, which is good, but you get Zoom fatigue after so long, and when you’re on for four or five hours at a time, it can be exhausting.”
Meanwhile, for Dr. Dennis Zambrano, a surgical resident, the pandemic and its recent forced ban on elective surgery has led to more work on a simulator than with actual patients, although that scene is changing (the restrictions are beginning to be lifted), and he expects to be spending much more time in the operating room.
“We’re going to be back full force with our elective cases,” he explained. “And that’s big; that translates into more OR time.”
While the pandemic has brought some changes to how learning is carried out, and certainly changed many facets of day-to-day operations at hospitals, residency remains a critical
4 WWW.HEALTHCARENEWS.COM JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022