Denver+Health

=About the site= Denver Health is a large safety net hospital that provides (according to Clay Cothren Burlew) $44 million in uncompensated care each month. Your patients will range from hospital employees and their families to the most underserved populations. Many patients are non-English speaking, of whom the majority are Spanish-speaking only.

=About the rotations=

Surgery
With the change in work hour limits in July 2011, this will likely be different than what I experienced in May-June 2011. Students (and residents) worked from 5am to somewhere between 6 and 9pm most days, and took overnight call (by choice) once a week which was 5am to noon or 1pm the next day. On these 30+ hour shifts, there was sometimes an opportunity to sleep a few hours but more likely no sleep at all. Students were integral parts of their teams and often I wondered how the work would get done without a student on the team. Usually, there was not a chance for lunch, so be prepared to eat massive breakfasts and carry granola bars with you.

While this sounds grueling, it was actually a lot of fun and a great environment to learn in. While you will not likely spend much time with your family during this rotation, you'll see a wide range of surgeries and have ample opportunity to scrub on interesting cases. You'll be the primary provider for a number of patients and get to participate in emergent and trauma cases on almost a daily basis. You will look and feel terrible at the end of the rotation, but that will go away within a month or so.


 * All support staff are top-notch. Do you best to learn their names as they very much appreciate that.
 * Ask supporting staff questions, they are very helpful.
 * Batteries for pagers are with admin at front desk.
 * The coffee shop only accepts credit cards for >$5 purchases, but you can get a card and preload however much you want on it.
 * Parking the garage is $2 cash/day (free on weekends) or there's free street parking in surrounding neighborhoods.

Schedules

 * Attending rounds are at 8:30
 * Lunch is at noon and you can expect FREE food as conferences are always held at lunch.
 * Tuesday is Little India

Badging

 * You get temporary badges - no photos or anything the day of orientation. Nothing to stress about prior.

IT

 * It is likely you won’t have access to all of the applications you need right off the bat: T-drive, LCR, EDM, PACS, and Life Link Clinicals. Call IT at 63777 - they are very friendly and will get it all take care of.
 * T-drive
 * Your team will update sign out notes here. You need access! Call 6377 if you can’t access your file.
 * All sign-outs are located here as of 5/20: T://Residents/SIGN-OUT/5-Floor signouts/your team name/
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">LCR
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Use this to see information pertaining to your patient’s current hospital stay.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Lab Data
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Radiograph reports
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Gi Lab reports
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Etc
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">You will not be able to access images from this site, only reports
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">PACS
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Look at CT, xray images here
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Life Link Clinicals
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Pretty magical
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Vitals + Current Lab data + Nurse notes + PT/OT Notes + other stuff
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">How-to
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Add patients using their med record id to your census
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Then select the patient from your census and click one of the buttons bottom right of the data that pops down. Sorry I can’t remember what it looks like, but it brings to you a page displaying their ins/outs.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Then click on the “Clinical Provider” or something like that tab. This is the place where lots of data is brought together for you.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">If that doesn’t work or says something like you need to adjust the preferences...
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In the top left corner you need to have a site (or something like that) selected. It should day “Denver Health”. I didn’t figure this out for a week or so. So play with it until you get it to say Denver Health. My apologies I can’t offer better information.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Explore from here
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">EDM
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Use this to look at past medical records.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Also use to look at EKG data and ECHO reports.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">How-to
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Search for patient by med-record number
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Then use the drop down in top left to organize by Service / Chronological view or something to that effect. Stuff is not well organized here, so if you can get it to display a “Discharge” folder then you’re golden. Using this drop down to organize the folders will help you quite a bit.