This is a finalist in the 2015 STFM Blog Competition.

Avelina Sandoval, MD
“You only see what you look for. You only recognize what you know.”
My attending’s words resonated in my mind as I stood there in my short white coat amidst the chaos of the busy trauma bay. It had been an extremely long night.
I was on my mandatory trauma call as a freshly minted third-year medical student. We had heard stories from our upper classmates about what to expect as we left our classroom nest and went off into the hospitals. We would either get to do “doctor-ly” things or we would get stuck with grunt work depending on who was on our team and how busy the service was.