the nerdiest room in the hospital

On the fourth floor of the hospital, in the little-known D wing, beyond a keypad-locked door... lies the Resident Call Suite. Or the Resident Lounge. Or whatever you want to call it. Most people just call it 4D.

4D consists of a long narrow hallway flanked by small rooms... mostly call rooms which contain nothing but a bed and a desk, where the residents sleep-- if they are so lucky-- when they work overnight at the hospital. There is also the Learning Lab, containing computers (for looking stuff up and checking one's email) and phones (for paging and dictating).

At the far end of the hallway, through a couple doors which seem to serve no real purpose, is the kitchen which is stocked with a couple fridges, a microwave, and free food (bagels and chips if you're lucky, string cheese and saltine crackers if you're not). Last in the string of common spaces is the lounge, which contains sagging couches, a large TV which is endlessly on, a ping-pong table, and a pop machine which gives out free pops. (Score!)

Probably the least-used common area in 4D, though, is.... well, actually, I'm not sure what it's called. It's got shelves lining one wall, a whiteboard on the other, and a large table in the middle strewn with textbooks:

(Really old textbooks, I might add:)
I've only ever seen this room used for two purposes. The first is for the occasional medical student who wants a quiet place to study-- since the so-called "Learning Lab" is usually full of not learning so much as seven or eight twenty-something young doctors engaging in loud and often profanity-peppered conversations about their families, their superiors, their work schedule, the latest exploits of their favorite athletic team, etc.

Note the sutures tied to a chair, where some medical student had no doubt retreated to practice tying surgical knots in peace:


The other purpose for the room is for the residents who occasionally feel pangs of guilt about making their medical students stand around, and really honestly want to make the rotation a Good Learning Experience for the students. So during some down time, they drag their students to this room and give them an impromptu lecture on IV fluid management, antibiotic use in septic shock, or (in this case, apparently) the physiology of the heart:

And so ends your tour of the Nerdiest Room In The Hospital. (I wish I had something witty to say to end this blog post, but I don't. So there you go. The end.)