First week of clinic

Monday began my first week of clinic, and it being a short week, there wasn't really a lot happening. Here's what I had:

Monday afternoon: Whitman-Walker Clinic (http://www.whitman-walker.org/). It was pretty much the first HIV/AIDS clinic in DC, and continues to serve that function (and others). I'm working with the medical director, who sees about half of the time (doing medical director stuff the other half), mostly doing HIV primary care. Patients come in every three months and have labwork done to check CD4 counts (white blood cells targeted by HIV), HIV viral lode, full chemistry panel and liver function tests, and to screen for syphilis, TB, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C. My job on Monday was to go in, chat with the patient, find out how they were doing and if they were having any affects from their medications, go over their labwork, and to do a quick physical exam. I saw three patients, and all three of them were doing well, so that's obviously the ideal.

Tuesday morning: This is supposed to be travel clinic at Rader Clinic on Ft. Myer. However, I found out after driving down there that my one patient cancelled that morning. So then it was a drive back up to WRAIR to get some other work done. Here's what my drive looked like that day:

And then back home from WRAIR (C to A) at the end of the day. Obviously.

Wednesday afternoon: This was supposed to preventive medicine clinic at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (formally known as National Naval Medical Center, or just Bethesda). However, just like on Tuesday, there were no patients, so I got to spend the afternoon sitting on my couch, making phone calls for my concussion study.

And speaking of the concussion study, I've made it all the way through the list of people I needed to contact (235 soldiers). Of those, we have 11 subjects who sent their surveys back completed, 75 surveys that have been mailed and are awaiting return, 6 declines, 60 who have changed their phone numbers/email addresses and we couldn't get hold of, and 83 voicemail messages that I still have to follow-up on. Guess what I'll be doing tomorrow?

More clinic next week. Maybe I'll actually have patients to see.