♪♪ Okay.

Everyone, we're going to start.

-We are a free clinic.

We provide a "transition to care" model where we see patients for either two or four visits, and that allows us more visits to kind of try to get things under control before we transition them to hopefully our full-time weekday clinic, which runs out of the same buildings.

We are often people's first doctor that they've seen in decades, so it's a really important first line.

Kind of getting things under control.

Often that means that they'll have ten unmanaged problems and it's really challenging.

But just recognize that this is the only care people get, and often the first care people get in a really long time.

-[Chetali] I started volunteering at the ECHO clinic my first and second years.

We didn't have the medical background yet to actually do the, you know, history, physical -- the medical side of it.

But we would try to do more of the social side of it.

And now I'm doing the thing that I signed up for.

Finally.

[to patient] Lungs sound good... to me.

First few years, all about book learning, lectures, that sort of thing.

And then third year is about rotations and actually being in the hospital and applying it, seeing patients.

It's a whole new way of thinking, this whole new language.

Trying to become fluent in something that... you know, you haven't really gotten nearly enough exposure to, and... it was hard.

I, like, really felt like a dumbass every single day.

♪♪ -Me llamo Chetali.

Soy estudiante de medicina.

Now, I'm just going to ask you some questions about you as a person and your life.

You can answer as much or as little as you'd like, okay?

Um, okay.

So... how many days a week have you been feeling like you can't stop or control your worrying?

-[Interpreter] ¿Cuántos días a la semana se ha sentido que no puede controlar su preocupación?

-[Interpreter] About two.

-[Chetali] Okay.

Um... how many days uh... do you feel worried too much about different things?

-¿Cuántos días se siente preocupado sobre diferentes cosas?

-So we ask these questions because we want to screen patients for mental health conditions that we can help with and provide support for.

Would you be interested in getting a referral for those services, like counseling or therapy?

-¿Le interesa recibir una referencia a alguna ayuda así, sea la terapia...?

-Sí me gustaría.

-"Yeah, I would like that."

-Great.

Okay.

-Each rotation that we have, um... we're in a different specialty.

And at the end of the six-week rotation, uh, we take a big exam on all the different topics um... from that specialty.

Oh, God, I haven't done nearly enough practice questions.

I have not learned about all these random disorders.

I need to like go into crunch time.

I would say, like, five hours a day, maybe, after going to work at the hospital.

Not that all of that is productive.

A lot of it is me taking snack breaks or stretching breaks or like crying breaks... not crying breaks.

I keep saying I cry.

I don't...

I actually haven't cried at all this rotation, but... spiritually, crying a little bit.

[sirens in distince] I thought I'd reflect on my day.

It was quite chaotic.

It started off, uh, with one attending making another attending cry, and then me scrubbing into a C-section right after.

And then watching, like, five babies get born.

Basically what happened with that... with the, uh... with the debacle, uh... between attendings was that the one who was working and signing out the patient had decided to kind of let the patient have natural delivery by, uh... you know, just like, let the labor progress.

Uh...

Whereas the other attending was like, "Why would you do that?"

Like... "The patient... you know, that's... you should just do a C-section, get it out."

Um... And I guess, I mean, the way that it was said was kind of, perhaps, offensive to this first attending.

And so that attending began to cry and yell.

And then the other attending went to go consent the patient for a C-section, was just like, "Okay, come.

Scrub."

I was like, "Help!

The med student's uncomfortable.

It it just made me wonder, because as we were all kind of prepping the patient to... go into surgery, um, all the nurses were kind of sad.

And I asked why, and they were like, "This person shouldn't have to have a C-section if she wanted to deliver vaginally."

And definitely made me... reflect on some practices in medicine, and how we can make that better and... where the problems lie, too.

Um... Yeah.

What a day.

Now, time to sleep.

[sirens in distance]