Working In The Hospital – Finally

This past week was my first week at work in an actual hospital, as an actual doctor!  

I’ve been working a day a week at a biotech startup, which is fun, interesting, and different, but it’s not practicing cardiology.  Just to remind everyone, all of my medical diplomas and board exams transferred to the Israeli medical system, and they granted me a medical license without having to take any exams or do any further training.  And regarding my cardiology specialty, they accepted my US board exams and medical practice experience and are prepared to give me official recognition as a cardiologist subject to a three month observation period at an Israeli academic center where an academic cardiologist can “sign off” that I know what I’m doing.  

I had applied to two different hospitals for this three month “rotation” soon after the COVID pandemic took off and was told they couldn’t take on any new personnel.  The third hospital I tried for finally said they could do it, and after going through a few weeks of online orientation, (complete with online Hebrew quizzes), visits to the hospital’s occupational health clinic to verify that I am healthy enough to work and that my vaccination record is up to date, visits to my family doctor to have a TB skin test as well as blood drawn to check my antibody titers from my childhood vaccinations, visits back to occupational health to get a tetanus booster and then a separate visit to get a measles booster, finally I was declared fit to work.  And last week was my first week “on the job.”  

We only have one car here, so on days that Val needs to drive the boys to school, which currently due to COVID is 4 days a week – the other two days they have zoom classes from home. And yes, you counted right, that’s six days of school per week. (They’re getting really smart 😂🙄.) The other two days I take the car and around 1-2PM (after morning rounds) I drive up to Caesarea to my one-day-a-week (which has now become two-half-days-a-week) biotech job. Sheba Medical Center happens to be located right next to a military base. So on days when I ride the bus, I ride a bus full of young Israeli soldiers. And despite the “bus-ness” of it, its pretty cool actually.

I started by joining the CCU team.  That’s the cardiac intensive care unit.  As an academic center (Sheba hospital was just ranked the 9th best hospital in the world.  No kidding. In the world.)  they have the whole team with an attending physician, a cardiology fellow, and a couple of internal medicine residents.  There seem to be new people filtering in and out each day.  Morning rounds are slow and thorough in the 12 bed unit.  They start between 8 and 8:30.  The first day they went until almost 3PM.  (that’s just morning rounds…) The day after, they ended around 1PM.  After morning rounds everyone scatters to do charting, study, accept new admissions, or do minor procedures which may be necessary that day.  

Because I don’t have any actual patient care responsibilities, I just tag along, trying to understand the Hebrew, asking the residents questions about Israeli medical system, and discussing the cardiology issues with the team in a combination of English and some broken Hebrew.  I watch them type their notes in Hebrew into the EMR (the electronic medical record) and try to understand what they’re saying.  It’s good to be “back in the game” so to speak.  I’m supposed to do computer training tomorrow to get my login to the EMR.  If nothing else, it’s cool to use some of the vocabulary I learned in doctor’s ulpan.  But the funniest thing has got to be the cooler full of chicken soup.  For real. Each pt gets a ladle, them they leave it there and the nurses and residents help themselves.