I had the opportunity to do a Family Medicine rotation with Dr. Dipesh Patel at his outpatient practice in Macon, Georgia, and it was honestly one of the best rotations I’ve done. It was a high-volume clinic where we saw 30+ patients together every day. I got the chance to see patients on my own, take histories, come up with differentials, and present to Dr. Patel. We also visited a nursing home once a week, which was another great learning experience.
Dr. Patel has been a Program Director for a geriatrics fellowship and is board-certified in family medicine, geriatrics, and palliative medicine. He has a strong academic background and a lot of experience teaching residents and fellows, so he would constantly quiz me on differentials and management. He really pushed me to think through cases, especially in family medicine where patients are often undifferentiated and the possibilities are wide.
I saw a wide variety of patients, from common cases like headaches, cognitive impairment, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, URTIs, and gout, to zebras like serotonin syndrome. I also got exposure to procedures like joint injections, ear irrigation, wart freezing, and cyst excision.
Coming from India, where family medicine as a speciality isn’t very common, this rotation really showed me the full scope of FM in the US. I had done a few rotations before this, but this was definitely one of the most educational ones and something I ended up talking about a lot in my interviews.
Macon is a diverse suburban area, and I stayed at a hotel close to the clinic with grocery stores within walking distance, which made things easy. Dr. Patel also picked me up and dropped me home every day for clinic, which I really appreciated.
Overall, it was a great month, and I’m really grateful to Dr. Dipesh Patel for going out of his way to make this rotation so meaningful and educational. A huge thank you as well to Dr. Hemant sir and the Shivani Bhatt Charitable Foundation for arranging this and always being available whenever I needed help. I hope to help other students the same way they’ve helped me.