Job Offer

I was offered ANOTHER job on Friday. It was the coolest moment of my week. In fact, I'm still feeling pretty snappy about the whole situation.

I was at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, in the middle of my clinical rotations for school. ARMC is San Bernardino's county hospital. This hospital sees the worst of the worst in terms of patients. It is, however, the best of the best in terms of medical care. The facility is only a few years old and routinely allows hospital administrators from around the world to tour this site, so that they can model the foreign hospital after this one. It is an incredible place to work.

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Friday's rotation was a bit nerve-racking! I was the first student to present a current patient's case to the lead pulmonologist. I arrived around 6am and found the patient I would present. I had to run a number of tests on this patient, look over the lab work, and research the patient's history. All before 9am. Just as I was finishing up with all of my chores, it was decided to change this patients ventilator status. Basically all of my information was now worthless. I had 20 minutes to re-group, re-write and be ready to present. In addition, the pulmonologist I was presenting my case to is NOT known for his tact. He is one of those characters that we dread at school. Conversations about him traditionally go something like this: "Oh MAN! You had to present to Dr Robinson? How bad was it?" Rarely does anyone come out unscathed!

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9:05 Not only does Dr. R. arrive so does every therapist on duty for the day, as well as the supervisors and the DIRECTOR of cardiopulmonary department! If I was going down, I was going to go down in front of a crowd! 9:06 I began my presentation. I presented the information as best I could and tried to sound like I had done this a million times. No problem, right? As I finished, I stood there and waited for the aftermath. As Dr. R slowly turned to look at me, I resisted the urge to give him a begging look for mercy.

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He said: "That was an outstanding presentation. I am quite impressed".

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Quietly I said, "Thank you, Doctor. I appreciate that." On the inside, I was singing "Neener Neener Neener!!! I didn't make an ass out of myself... and now all of the OTHER students have to follow my lead! Neener Neener Neener!" Once everything was finished, I was congratulated on my "outstanding" job by numerous therapist. Yeaaaah my team! But as with every great accomplishment, it was soon over and I had to run back to a patient's room and continue my day's work.

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Ten minutes later, the director of the department came into the patient's room with me. She said that "I've had a good feeling about you since I met you last year. You really impressed Dr. R. and that just confirms what I thought. I want to offer you a position here once you are finished with school in the spring. Don't bring me a resume, just walk into my office and you have a job on the spot". My clinical supervisor said to me later that job offers like this are quite unusual.

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I am sooooo awesome.