Well, it’s that time of year again — time for me to return to the general inpatient wards and manage the kids who’ve been admitted to the hospital for your more standard (read: non-oncologic) pediatric issues. This time, I return as the senior resident, which means that instead of micromanaging (“are you using your incentive spirometer every 10 minutes like we asked you to?”), I get to command a team of interns, subinterns, and medical students taking care of 15-20 patients. It’s a fun job, since without the micromanagement, I have a lot more time and energy to devote to thinking about bigger-picture issues and entire disease processes. I also get to see more volume — more kids, more ways of coming to medical attention, more pathology, and more interventions.

As a result, though, my volume here may decline a bit for the next four weeks — but I hope to be posting more about what’s going on inside the hospital than I normally do.