Gastroenterology rotation

This month I started a gastroenterology rotation at a private hospital. I have the privilege of working with a very experienced and highly respected gastroenterologist attending physician. In terms of workload we see 2 to 4 patients and maybe one or two consults. The attending has more patients than this, of course. However discussing and supervising the "teaching" patient cases is relatively time-consuming for the attending physician and if there are too many teaching patients to be seen (not a problem on this part of the rotation), rounding and supervision becomes very rushed and sometimes not very useful from a training perspective. Fortunately we have plenty of time for observing procedures such as EGD's and colonoscopies. A third-year medical student is also rotating on the service. This medical student is extremely smart and very helpful. Depending on how many patients we have on our service or what lectures the medical student must go to, I may have the student see all the patients and then pre-round the the patients with him. At this hospital with hospital we (the residents and attending doctors) can addend medical student notes and depending on what the schedule is exactly, I may write a few complete or all of the progress notes and consult history and physical notes (documents). This way I can talk about the patients and pathologies with the student before we meet with the attending. The medical students On my service usually find this helpful and they are more prepared when the attending asks them questions about the patient and associated illnesses and treatments. I certainly learned a lot from teaching the material as well. I just started this rotation and thus far the cases have been relatively straightforward. I hope to see a difficult or complicated or unusual case soon because need to give a presentation next week as part of the gastroenterology conference. Although I'm not required to work on weekends for the gastroenterology service at this time, I am on call for the hospital where I'm rotating. I may see an interesting gastroenterology case during my overnight call because I see so many patients. Another possibility for the discussion at the hospital gastroenterology conference this coming week might be some of the cases from last month when I was on the transition rotation. Patients with cerebral palsy and spina bifida and other congenital conditions can have life threatening problems with chronic severe constipation not effectively treated with laxatives, bowel motility agents or rectal enemas and have surgical anatomical modifications to their GI tract in addition to daily motility agents or laxatives (such Polyethylene Glycol 3350 - brand name Miralax) to help prevent bowel perforation and other medical complications of chronic . For example, see the MACE modification (see http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malone_antegrade_continence_enema).