This month, I had my ophthalmology rotation. One thing that I often fail to understand is that ophthalmology is one of the most competitive specialties to get into in the USA, while in India as far as clinical specialties go it is one of the least competitive.

I started my rotation in an outpatient center. At this point, I should take the opportunity to tell you that there are no ambulatory rotations in India. Ambulatory and inpatient care are taught together. Each rotation is structured in such a way that a student is assigned a particular clinical team. From there on in the student participates in every team activity along the way. Personally, I would feel more comfortable having separate ambulatory and inpatient rotations.

In the outpatient center, there were several diseases which presented with similar symptoms. Symptoms such as red eye, discharge and decrease of vision were amongst the most commonly seen. However, the most common symptom that I came across during my rotation was chronic, painless and progressive loss of vision. The usual diagnosis for this being the cataracts. Once this was determined, the rest of the day would be spent classifying it as mature/premature, nuclear/cortical, senile/presenile and what not.

The cataract can be regarded as the staple food for ophthalmologists: 80% of ophthalmic OR lists consists of cataract patients in India. Ophthalmologists make their living out of it. So ophtha looks like a great way forward, if you just want to enjoy your life: you can learn one thing, the cataract, and you probably will be making decent amount of money. Although don’t think that you can afford to forget conjunctivitis and uveitis, but if you have spent three years in residency then you will at least know this.

The rotation has given me insight (no pun intended!) as to why ophthalmics is getting increasingly more popular. Who doesn’t want to live peacefully? The rotation was cool as far as hours are concerned: having a 9am-4pm schedule is always good. But somehow, I didn’t enjoy the feeling of working under the microscope, so from this I have decided that ophthalmology is certainly out of my list as a career path.

 
Off Duty

This was a great month socially. I had a lot of free time thanks to my ophthalmology rotation so. I went manic watching lots of good old English movies. I watched about 30 of them. That’s not a bad average. I also visited my family every weekend as soon I’ll be living in the USA and won’t have the opportunity to see them often.

I passed my USMLE Step 2 CS on 29th of this month. I’m one step closer to having a career in the USA. Medical school is coming to an end, everyone of us will choose our own path, friends will no longer be there to help me in strange and alien places. But this is what life is all about. Isn’t it?

OK, that’s all for this month, I’m getting wistful.