Resident Physician Columnist
Duke University Medical Center
Austin is an intern in Duke’s combined Internal Medicine/Pediatrics residency program. After spending the last ten years as a student at Washington University in St. Louis (WashU), minus a one-year stint in Malawi, which he chronicled in his in-Training column, “Lessons in Lilongwe”, Austin is excited to explore a new institution for his residency training. His column provides real-time reflection on the difficulties and small victories of life as a resident and how social support systems and interpersonal connections are critical to that journey. You can follow him @drwesevich.
The Med-Peds Bunch
In light of recent press on resident burnout and depression, The Med-Peds Bunch explores the lived social support systems of a current Duke resident. Come join Austin as he begins his med-peds journey and reflects on feelings of family in residency.
Early in intern year, I reached out to residents in other departments who were part of my patients’ care in the hospital. In an effort to redirect my thought patterns, I asked them how and what drives their interaction styles and their medical decisions.
I distinctly remember my drive to the hospital for the first shift of my residency five years ago. It was a night shift, a fact that only added to my trepidation. My brain bounced frantically back and forth among a random assortment of topics of which I lacked, I felt, sufficient knowledge, but which knowledge I felt sure I would imminently be called upon to use in a critical situation.
On Match Day, you are assigned to a new family for the next three to seven years. This will be the city where you might buy your first home, the city where you may meet the people who will speak at your wedding. An algorithm shuffles you into your assigned place in a new family tree.
A graphic medicine comic on wellness and lessons learned in the first year of family medicine residency.
Tommy became my patient about halfway through my PICU rotation. He arrived as a transfer from an outside hospital due to concern for liver failure, and on a morning when we already had four admissions, he became another checkbox on my to-do list.
I had such difficulty explaining to my family and friends not in medicine the concept of the match. I finally settled on a lottery-Bachelor fusion to explain it. Just replace the aspiring lovers with program directors and medical students, and roses with Match Day letters.
My early idea of what it meant to be a intern came from a combination of pop culture physician idols (i.e. ER) and a handful of actual medical experiences. A dive headfirst from a shopping cart at young age earned me my first trip to the emergency room.
Residency is hard. Anyone who tells you differently needs a stat GI consult because they’re full of it. You will be tired physically, mentally, and emotionally, regardless of what specialty you enter.
From the moment I set foot in the hospital as an intern on June 24, 2016 at 4:55 a.m. to the present as I write this reflection, my life feels as though it were playing in fast forward. It is hard to believe Match Day was almost a year ago.
March 18, 2016. I had been anticipating this day for months and I could not believe that it had finally arrived. I woke up that morning, sat on my couch, and began to journal as I do pretty much every day.
“Daddy, time to wake up! It is morning time!” I open my eyes to our four-year-old daughter at the foot of the bed smiling, her hair meticulously braided. I get up and wake her younger brother from his crib and carry him downstairs. The baby is still sleeping.
“Bunny!” my mom shouted from the foot of the steps, hurrying me out of bed the morning after my medical school graduation. She used the childhood nickname that came from my brother who was unable to pronounce “Dominic” as a toddler, a name that had stuck well into adulthood.
Resident Physician Contributing Writer
Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University
Dominic Decker is an English major at heart now training in internal medicine. He completed a master's degree in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, attended the University of Minnesota Medical School, and is in residency at Brown University.
