Issue 67 - July 11, 2025

Sole Purpose 67
Everyone Starts Somewhere:
Lessons (and Laughs) From Intern Year

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Recently, I’ve been seeing a wave of posts online warning people to “avoid the hospital” on July 1st. The reason? The incoming class of shiny new interns hitting the floors for the first time. I remember reading those posts right before starting residency myself—and being mortified. Was I about to become a walking liability?! Suddenly, the stethoscope around my neck felt a lot heavier.

So, for today’s article, I want to put incoming interns at ease.

Here’s the truth: no one is ready to be an attending straight out of medical school. That’s exactly why residency exists. It’s a time to learn, to grow—and yes, to make mistakes (and then actually learn from them). Even the most impressive, God-like surgeon you know once had their own first day as an intern. And chances are, they messed something up. Probably more than once.

To celebrate the awkward beauty of this rite of passage, I turned to social media and asked people to share their most embarrassing, funny, or painfully relatable intern moments. I received over 100 responses—and many had me laughing so hard I was wiping tears from my eyes.

I'll be including a few of my own cringeworthy stories too. All stories will remain anonymous but will be shared in first person to keep the storytelling vibe authentic.

Let’s normalize being new. Let’s laugh a little. And let’s remind ourselves that medicine is learned one patient, one mistake, and one “Wait, what do I do here?” moment at a time.

Typical Interns

On my first day, I called my attending dad (he is not my father).
Everyone was talking about how I had a “golden weekend”, and I thought they were saying I had a golden retriever dog and kept explaining how I don’t have a dog… I literally just didn’t know the term “golden weekend” (AKA a normal weekend).
I forgot my pager number and got asked on the phone for the podiatry pager number and just made a number up. Only to have them call back and yell at me.
I was asked to make a “border” with the drapes for a skin graft for my attending and I just stapled 2 blue towels together not knowing what to do and they laughed at me.
I tried to put an SCD device on a patient with no leg in front of the attending.
I tried to palpate pulses on someone’s prosthetic limb.

I broke scrub because after I was scrubbed and gowned, I tied my attendings gown.
I ordered 2 grams of Ancef on an infant and my attending laughed.
I was operating on a 21-month-old patient and told my attending several times the patient was a 21-YEAR-old patient.
I fell down the stairs in front of my chief resident.
I was rounding and dropped my ENTIRE rounding bucket, and all the supplies went everywhere, and a nurse asked me if I was new here.
I told my chief resident that I don’t drink… she then told all my attendings that I am “celibate”.
My first week I went to tie my shoe and everything in my pockets fell out all over the floor.
I was so nervous for residency orientation that I parked my car and didn’t pay attention to where I parked. I then LOST my car in the parking lot and could not find it after orientation and wandered around for at least 10 minutes looking like a loser.
The first time I got paged, I didn’t know how to return a page, and I had to call a coresident at 1am.
One of my first time closing deep, I closed the subcutaneous and then just kept going and did horizontal mattresses with the absorbable suture… my attending laughed.
It took me 40 minutes to do my first toe amputation because I was so nervous.
I was asked how many liters of oxygen my patient is on, and I came back and told the attending the SpO2 percentage.
I started podiatry residency on my internal medicine rotation, and I excitedly volunteered to see a patient for “Balanitis” because I didn’t know what it was. It is inflammation of the penis.
I sprayed myself with phenol in clinic doing an ingrown toenail.
I got lost every single day in the hospital for my first week.
I got consulted to the pediatric Emergency room and had to ask for directions on how to get there when I got paged.
I dressed a random patients “wound” because I went into the wrong room and the patient had dementia and couldn’t tell me their name, so I just put a dressing on a random lady’s callus only to discover they weren’t the right patient.
Got handed a suture anchor and told not to drop it. Dropped it immediately.

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Told my attending that a patient’s blood alcohol was “very high” because I didn’t know how to interpret the lab. Their blood alcohol was well below the legal limit.
Contaminated the sterile field IMMEDIATELY my first day.
My first week in clinic I was trimming someone’s toenails and got a toenail STUCK IN MY EYE and had to go to the emergency room at my hospital because we couldn’t get it out and I scratched my eye with the toenail.
I got asked which podiatry school produces the worst students… and I said the podiatry school my attending went to (not knowing).
Tried to order an MRI on someone who was intubated and asked, “if it could be done bedside”.
I ordered a pregnancy test on an 86-year-old woman for preoperative workup.
I submitted PTO for the wrong week and was out of the country and my chief called me asking why I didn’t show up to my rotation because I didn’t check the dates.
I was on call for Halloween so I dressed up because I thought everyone would. Nobody dressed up and one of my attendings HATED my costume.
I injected the wrong foot with local before starting the procedure.
Dropped a HUGE piece of the TALUS on the ground during a big trauma case.
I was so bad and slow at suturing at first that my attending asked me if I was actively having a stroke.
My first case ever the patient had restless leg syndrome, and I went to make the incision, and the patient kicked their leg up and I accidentally moved and made an incision… on the wrong toe.

Some Common Themes of Shared Stories Among Lots of People

Dropped something on the floor during the case.
Contaminated the sterile field during a case.
Ordered the wrong medication.
Pronounced a medical condition/medicine incorrectly.
Consulted/Paged the wrong team.
It took me an excessively long amount of time to do insert simple task that should be quick.
Wrong patient, wrong foot, wrong note, wrong chart.

Here’s the truth: as a new intern, you’re going to make mistakes. It’ll be overwhelming at times—you’ll doubt yourself, mess things up, and maybe even consider hiding in a supply closet. But you’ll learn, grow, and come out the other side wiser and more confident (with a stronger sense of humor, too).

One of my mentors in medical school once reassured me with this oddly comforting line:

“It’s really hard for you to kill someone.” Not because you’re perfect (spoiler: you’re not), but because hospitals are full of checks and balances. Most mistakes get caught before they ever reach the patient. The system is designed to support you as you learn.

Welcome to residency. It is TOUGH, no doubt. But there’s a lot of joy and meaning in the mess. Ask for help, do your best, and laugh when you can. I’m here cheering you on. Below are a few reflections from my own intern year—featuring plenty of cringe, growth, and very “lame” moments.

I’m always here to cheer you on, support you, and remind you you’re not alone. Below are a few articles I’ve written about my first year of residency and my proudest moments of being a thoroughly mediocre, wonderfully “lame” intern.

Articles

Sole Purpose 32 - My First Month of Residency

Sole Purpose 47 – Dr Who? Using Your Title With Patients

Sole Purpose 51 – Pickles, Patience, and the Residency Vinegar

Sole Purpose 53 -Off Service Adventures: When Residency Takes a Detour

Sole Purpose 54 - Taking PTO

Sole Purpose 55 – Navigating the Move to Residency

Sole Purpose 56 - Being on Call