Hello, My name is Jennifer Maya and I am currently a second year at St. Joe's. I wanted to spend some time sharing my experience in FMC 3. The FMC rotations are designed to prepare us for our future practice by expanding our skills in ambulatory medicine with increasing the amount of time in clinic for that month. There are four total FMC months with required readings. When we are not in clinic, we spend time on Radiology, Rehab Medicine, Community Medicine, and Management of Health Systems, depending which FMC month it is. FMC 3 is dedicated to management of health systems.

Typically, the morning or afternoon is spent in clinic and the other part of the day is spent with someone that with teach us about the business aspect of running an office, like the office manager of a local practice, or central billing. Because of my interest in OB, I have also had a few of my personal OB patients deliver that month as well. This past week I induced one of my OB patients. Typically, a patient will be told to come to the hospital in the early evening to begin induction, which will continue into the next day. My patient had arrived early in the morning, since the previous night all the beds on the OB floor were full with acute patients coming in. I started out by asking the resident on call to place Cervidil in the patient. I then came in early that day to check on her and see how she was doing. She was a first time mom and was doing great.

After checking on her, I headed off to a local practice to spend time with the business manager, who showed and explained to me how their office was run. It was very interesting to see how this group practice was run. I would occasionally call in to the hospital to see how my patient was doing. I then left the office to check on my patient again and attend noon conference. After noon conference, I again went to check on my patient, who continued to do well, and left for my afternoon clinic. Afternoon clinic was full, and consisted of OB visits, well child checks, and follow-ups on chronic issues. It was a nice variety of patients. During clinic, I called over to the floor to check on my patient and ask the resident on call to pull the Cervidil and start my patient on Pitocin. After clinic, it was back to the OB floor to see how things were going.

She continued to progress and later that evening, I broke her water and inserted an IUPC. That was around 10pm. She still had a ways to go for a first time mom. I then left the hospital and asked the resident on call to call me with updates. Around 2:30 in the morning, my patient was complete and ready to start pushing. She delivered a healthy girl that morning, with enough time for me to get a little more shut eye until my day began again at 9am.

One of the great things about Family Medicine is that you will be assigned to a certain rotation, but you will still be experiencing other aspects of medicine. Whether it be in delivering an OB patient while not on OB, admitting a Medicine patient while on another rotation, or just the diverse experience we find in every clinic. St. Joe gives you many opportunities to enhance your residency experience, and we fortunately have the opportunity to take advantage of it.

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