Having repeatedly reaffirmed my career choice as a physician and/or medical researcher, I realized that I had virtually no experience helping actual patients. Consequently, I started working this February in the ever-busy trauma center at San Francisco General. Before long I found myself working every Friday night from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m., helping physicians and nurses complete a variety of tasks (lab-runs, guerney sheet-changes, etc.). More important, however, my primary role has been to provide moral support to and respond to the needs of often- confused and frightened patients. I have even been able to use my Spanish-speaking ability (acquired in part from my Mexican-American background) to help patients that did not know English. Trauma room life has been so exciting that I constantly find myself watching the physicians at work and helping them in any way possible, even by performing CPR on occasion. The satisfaction I have received in making the patients’ visits as pleasant as possible, as well as in making the staff’s work a little easier, has been inestimable. At four in the morning, I’m almost never ready to leave!