First time shadowing.

Today I was able to shadow Doctor Stefanelli a pediatric cardiologist.
I went up to the NorthWest Children's Heart Care clinic and they were expecting me since I previously scheduled this day to shadow Dr. Stefanelli. I got there about an hour before the first patient arrived, so Dr. Stefanelli showed me around the clinic and it was significantly bigger from that last time I was there because they had expanded. Then they put me on what they called a murmur machine that was used to train your ears to the different types of murmurs an unhealthy heart can make so that I could be able to recognize it when we started seeing patients. It was pretty cool to listen to how different the heart can sound with each of the problems that cardiologist face.
But before long we were in seeing patients. Dr. Stefanelli would give me a brief about what problem the child had so that I could have a good idea what they were talking about. We saw a lot of infants and whenever they had a murmur the doctor would give me the stethoscope so that I could listen and hear the murmur in a real patient. It was pretty neat to see how much you can actually diagnose from just listening to someones heart.
While we were not seeing patients I went in with the lab techs and watched them give echocardiograms. Something that over the years I seen a lot of but this time the lab techs explained what they were doing and what we were looking at. After watching a few I was able to see the different parts of the heart and was able see what didn't look right. After the echocardiograms we would go back to the tech room and sit down with the doctors and review the echo and see what was wrong if there was anything or any improvements they were making. We also looked at some chest x-rays to see if there were any improvements.
I was able to see a pretty wide range of heart problems that Dr. Stefanelli sees everyday from an infant that just completed his 4th surgery to rebuild his heart. To a 12 year old that was just trying to see if they have a heart problem. It was great learning experience that just reaffirmed my desire to become a doctor and my fascination with the human heart.
Great day.