Family medicine was a great rotation where I got to do and learn so much. This rotation came after long term care, which I did in internal medicine. I appreciate how much I got to learn with two general medicine rotations one right after the other. It was also interesting to learn the different aspects of care. In long term care, the patients were admitted and were acutely sick, whereas in the family medicine office I was mostly treating chronic conditions. 

I saw a wide variety of patients at the family medicine clinic including managing hypertension, diabetes, congestive heart failure, benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, allergic rhinitis, asthma, obesity, schizophrenia, tinea versicolor, restless leg syndrome, candidal vaginitis, hypothyroidism, H. pylori peptic ulcer disease, hyperkalemia. I got to perform annual physicals and employment physicals. I became familiar with which laboratory tests are needed on an annual basis, how often a hemoglobin A1C should be done in a diabetic. Although this rotation was not very procedure heavy,  I got very comfortable performing ECGs, performing venipuncture, and obtaining urea breath tests for H. pylori. 

In the first week of the rotation I saw patients with another provider, but by the second week I was seeing patients entirely on my own. After seeing the patient, interviewing them, examining them, doing venipuncture if necessary, I would present the patient to the provider supervising me, and she would tell me if she agreed with me or wanted to do something additional or different. I felt that this method gave me a lot of confidence, because I got to see patients on my own, and then was able to get feedback from the preceptor about the case. 

For future rotations I would like to continue to work on my differential diagnosis, my assessments and my plans for patients. Especially in family medicine when following a patient long term for sometimes multiple conditions, improving on creating a plan for those patients is a goal of mine. I would also like to improve on patient education, throughout the rotation I felt more confident in my clinical knowledge and educating patients about their condition and it is something I would like to continue to do on future rotations. 

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