Blog Post: 2/12/16

Hello all!

I have just flown from Scottsdale to France and am now up in the mountains with my aunt, the doctor I am shadowing. The trip has been very long and strenuous because we had several crazy and terrible mishaps. We stayed in this one small, dingy airport in Paris for almost 8 hours! Now, I am super excited to be in the town I will be doing my internship, Puget. Here we are up in the mountains where it is beautiful and cold. Brrrrrrrr....... but it is so picturesque.

I will be starting in the practice tomorrow that Dr. Godart runs herself. What she does is that every day she begins with doing some clinical rounds with her patients from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. Then, after that she either goes to the hospital, retirement home, or house visits. However, she does multiple of these shifts a day! Then, we go back to the practice for another six hours finishing around 7 or 8 and then we go either back to the hospital or more house calls. What this means is that we usually are working from 9 a.m. to 10 or 11 p.m.

I am just starting to learn the stressful and difficult job it is being a rural medical professional. The hours are crazy, the people are rude and the driving is insane. However, she says it is very rewarding and she is able to make a good living. One thing that really strikes me is the personal toll that weighs on the rural medical professional. She says that if she does not set breaks for herself then she will go crazy just thinking about what to do and if she made the right calls etc. She always says that being a doctor is difficult because if she makes a mistake someone dies or is seriously injured. People definitely rely on her.

She gave me a tour of her practice and while she was on the computer, I asked her how many patients she might have. She typed a few buttons scrolled down and told me 2,000 as on the computer. All these people that she either travels to or has come in need her to give them medical care. Most of them are very old and frail and are lost in the vast, bureaucratic mess that is the French Medical system. She has to sometimes drive for over forty minutes just to get to some small, rickety home to help an 94 year old woman. That day I also asked her how old was her oldest patient was and she said somewhere around 100. Yet, because she is one of two doctors in the immense region of the mountains in the South of France, she also takes care of children and newborns. Its a crazy job and life!

Thanks for reading! Ill keep ya'll updated. Bye!