Right after my exam at the end of June, I returned to Pittsburgh, where I will stay for the rest of the year. It was now my turn to attend a UPMC hospital, the monstrous medical corporation that dominates the skyline of downtown Pittsburgh. UPMC has many different hospitals within the area and I will be attending several of them throughout the rest of the year. For the next 7 weeks, I am assigned to Magee Women's Hospital, located close to downtown Pittsburgh. This rotation as it turns out, is going to be vastly different from my previous experiences.
Even though the hospital is close drive, the commute to work takes a little bit of time.
Students are to park in an offsite parking lot and then you have to take a shuttle to the hospital from there. The bright side is that the shuttles are frequent, and it is free. Its about a 5-10 minute shuttle ride from the parking lot, depending on traffic. Due to the raging Covid virus that is crippling our country (we must do better people!), masks must be worn at all times, except for when eating lunch.
Magee is a much different experience, as I have noted before. This is the first hospital that I have attended where I am not the main PA. With this being such a large facility, there are many PAs (approximately 5-8) that work there. Each week you will be assigned a mentor. They are there to guide you with each specimen that you work on. They are much needed, as UPMC has very specific, standardized ways to do each specimen. The plus side of this, is that there are templates that you get to use, where you can just fill in the blanks with information during your gross. The negative side to this, is that I felt like I didn't have the freedom to do my own gross, and there are certain specific things that you have to do with formatting, subject matter, etc.
Each week you will focus on a different type of specimen. My rotation started at an early 7:30 am - 4:00 pm shift. This rotation starts off with a rough week, as you gross fresh placentas all day, every day. It's a good way to perfect this specimen, as it is pretty common at other facilities, but this was agonizing. Cutting fresh placentas leave such a bloody mess, and cleanup takes a long time at the end of the day. The next few weeks you will focus on benign gynecologic specimens (products of conception and uterus, ovaries, ect.), malignant ones, benign breast, and malignant breast. It was a relief to start working on the uterus specimens. I have seen plenty of those before and I felt comfortable with them already. On the other hand, breast specimens are incredibly difficult to work with. I am very glad I had a mentor to help me out with them. The lesions in breast specimens are so difficult to visualize a lot of the times. I was usually indeterminate on what was lesion and what was just normal fibrosis. There is a wonderful x-ray machine in the lab that you are to use to look for the clips that the surgeons place at biopsy sites. This will help you locate the lesion. By the end of my rotation, I felt a lot more comfortable with these difficult specimens.
Another reason that makes working at a UPMC hospitals unique is that they "triage" a lot of their specimens. A designated PA will receive the specimen from surgery and will open up the specimen, do frozens, or ink the specimen beforehand. This saves a lot of time when it comes to your gross, especially inking the breast specimens. I was always pleased with how well the specimens were taken care of prior to grossing them. It is a good idea to ask to help out doing this one day, so you get some practice inking and observing some frozen sections. I wish that I would have done more of this.
UPMC hospitals give you a 5 dollar coupon/gift card to use at the cafeteria each day. This is a decent amount of help with not having a paying job. The cafeteria is above average, and during the summer on Fridays, they have special catering events outside. I ate my lunch almost every day at the turtle pond courtyard, where there are benches and tables to sit while watching the turtles and fish swim around. The hour-long lunch was a great time to decompress or study for then next upcoming exam.
My overall rotation at Magee was generally positive. I was able to work on difficult specimens with some needed guidance. I really learned a lot during my 7 weeks here. Unfortunately, I missed the variety of being able to receive all types of specimens the way I did at my other clinical rotations. That variety is one of my favorite parts of the job. Next month I continue on to another UPMC hospital, Presby, which specializes in head and neck, thoracic, and gastrointestinal specimens.
