Glad I stumbled upon your blog! I'm also taking a gap year as an ED scribe? Did you enjoy scribing?
I loved it!!! Looking back, I got exposed to a TON of things that I now understand much better. At the time, even when the doc was willing to teach, it didn’t make a ton of sense to me but now looking back I’m like oh yeah I did get to see a patient that had x or like this is what the physical exam findings are for y. I worked with whatever doctor was on shift so I got exposed to a lot of different styles of physicians and how they interact/interview their patients. It was also just good practice learning how to adapt to what is going on around you and it definitely improved my typing skills! I think my experiences will be especially useful third year as they helped me figure out how to be useful to the team and less in the way. It also help me figure out that I think I need more of a longer-term interaction with patients and it killed me not knowing what happened to them when they were sent upstairs. And when patients were “frequent fliers” it was never a good thing to see them again because it meant things were still not better for them. I ended up only scribing for approximately six months because my commute ended up being killer (45 minutes - 1 hour and a half drive each way depending on traffic). Best of luck! It’s a steep learning curve but you’ll be surprised when one shift you look up and realize you know what you’re doing!
Here’s a little bit where I talked about scribing ( 2 years ago omg it feels like yesterday)
http://texanmdtobe.tumblr.com/post/113391688459/what-i-have-learned-from-scribing-in-the-emergency















