Rotation Block 2: Army Family Medicine

Throughout August, I was on active duty with the Army, stationed at Fort Carson, near Colorado Springs, while I completed a 4 week medical rotation in Family Medicine. It absolutely rocked! Going into my third year, I was already heavily leaning toward family medicine, but this was nearly the clincher this month after having any doubts about what family medicine would be like in the Army laid to rest. From day 1 I felt welcome and a part of the Army healthcare team, and by the end, I knew this was where I am supposed to be! I totally love the broad scope of practice covered in family medicine within the Army. They really give you reign to become credentialed in whatever you want, whether it be more OB- even cesarean section deliveries, more GI procedures like colonoscopies, flex sigs, even appendectomies! You name it, you can do it! The way they accomplish this is via a number of unopposed family medicine residencies within the Army. An unopposed residency is a residency program located at an Army community hospital (MEDDAC) that only has FM residents in addition to the clinical staff. Therefore, the FM residents do much more inpatient service, work more closely alongside the surgery, OB, and peds staff, and getting far more procedural training than a residency that has to compete with IM, OB, surgery, and peds.

The other aspect I was curious about was in regards to how much I would be able to incorporate my osteopathic medicine training. I knew that some residency programs have already started up osteopathic specialty clinics that the D.O. residents get to do about once a week, but I want to integrate OMT into my everyday practice as well. Well I was fortunate enough to have a D.O. preceptor, CPT Joshua Will. He is awesome! He served as a great mentor, as he is much younger than my wise and well experienced cardiology preceptor, Dr. Cucher is. It was really nice to have a preceptor that I could relate with on many levels. He also used a lot of OMT in his practice, and recounted many stories about how sought after OMT is in the Army, especially overseas on deployment. Soldiers will seek you out if they know you are a D.O. and utilize osteopathic manual therapy.

I was assigned to one of the four family medicine clinics on Ft. Carson. It was really cool to see how integrated the healthcare team is in the Army. Everything is on one system (AHLTA), and put through a prescription at the end of the visit, or order labs, and your patient can just walk right down the hall and do them. You can also see whether or not they get the script or orders filled right away, lab results come back super fast, as do imaging reports, too!

I was able to get a lot of practical experience while up there. I saw a ton of patients, a lot of school physicals, and some cool procedures, including two vasectomies and a cesarean section! To be able to assist on these was totally awesome! I learned so much and was given so much guidance from all the physicians there! It probably will be my best rotation of the year, and moreover, it will totally prepare me for my audition rotations coming up next year!



I was also lucky enough to have my family come up to see me for a week and a half! It was fun for the kids to get away, even if the normally 12 hour trip took Meghan 18 hours due to the increased amounts of stops for the kids! We had a great time, tough! Unfortunately, there was a lot of rain storms that hindered our plans to see some things. We wanted to take the kids to see Santa's Workshop at the North Pole (conveniently located on the north side of Colorado Springs), but they were closed the days we were to go due to the weather. We did, however, go to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, despite the rainy weather! It was the coolest zoo! It is built on the mountain, offering some amazing exhibit enclosures and really unique terrain! We were able to feed giraffes, Braylei touched a snake, we were up close to wild deer (part of the mountain, not the zoo), and saw everything from Hippos to Grizzly Bears! We had a really great time! During the week, the kids also got to ride horses at some family friends. One weekend, I was showing them around the post and we were playing at one of the big playgrounds. Then all of the sudden these sirens started going off! We thought it was an air raid at first. But it was a sever lightening warning issued. We thought we would have a few minutes, as the dark clouds seemed a little ways off, and let the kids keep playing. Then out of nowhere it started pouring! We hurried and got the kids under cover under some playground equipment, but we were still getting wet as the rain started coming down sideways and then leaking from above! We decided that we would be there awhile if we tried to wait it out so we made a break for it. Most unfortunately, we were a good 400 yards from the car, so we were all soaked, and got all muddy from sprinting through the park. It made for a great memory though! Another cool thing we did was go a dinosaur museum in Canon City! There were cool exhibits, including the most complete Stegosaurus fossil in the world, fossils the kids could touch and sit on, and a really cool children's discovery area, where they could find pretned fossils, play with dinosaur toys, compare dinosaur fossils to other bones, and color. I probably had as much fun as the kids did!!




And lastly, after getting back home, Braylei got her hair cut short, which is what she wanted. It looks so cute and she looks so grown up, with the exception that she is so small!