#3: Golden
I'm sorry dear readers (of which there are only 3 confirmed!) that you all were left hanging until today when I said I'd write on Thursday night. Wednesday night's call started out innocuously enough. I got sign-out as usual and planned out my evening and it seemed manageable enough. Check up on labs/xray at 8 PM, round on a couple of patients by 9 PM, and two post-operative patient checks by 10 PM. Things were smooth, relaxed, efficient and I was thinking around midnight that I'd be able to get some sleep that night...
HOWEVER, around 12:15 PM I got a page saying that a patient was coming in to the hospital at around 4 AM for a liver transplant and that I had to post the case, write some pre-admission orders for the patient, and work her up when she came into the hospital. The person on the phone said it would be easy to do all this... Yet what she didn't realize is that all those steps were new to me, and I had to figure out each step of the way where to find the right info/etc, and what should have been an hours worth of work turned into 2.5 hours. For example, the computer program kept crashing whenever I put in the orders! In the end, I only slept 20 minutes that night and as a result was too tired to post an entry Thursday night.
In other news, I got to operate yesterday! The operation itself was NOT glamorous at all, and in fact if I wrote what type of operation it was I'm pretty sure everyone would be disgusted. Yet it was a pretty cool feeling when we started the case and my attending said, "Do you think you can finish the rest of this operation?" He then left the room and I was the only person left in the room to finish the case. Wierd feeling! The scrub nurse was humming a song and I correctly identified the song as "Gold Digger" to which she replied, "Dr. Maturin, you're not so bad!" Speaking of gold, this is my Golden Weekend which means I don't have to go to hospital on both Saturday AND Sunday. Not that I don't like being an intern, but it's nice to be off for two days in a row!
Patients covered last call night: Around 30.
Currently reading: Greenfield's Chronic Pancreatitis chapter.
Currently watching: Pirates of the Carribbean (tonight)
Next blog: Expected the evening of Tuesday July 11th after my fourth night of call.
HOWEVER, around 12:15 PM I got a page saying that a patient was coming in to the hospital at around 4 AM for a liver transplant and that I had to post the case, write some pre-admission orders for the patient, and work her up when she came into the hospital. The person on the phone said it would be easy to do all this... Yet what she didn't realize is that all those steps were new to me, and I had to figure out each step of the way where to find the right info/etc, and what should have been an hours worth of work turned into 2.5 hours. For example, the computer program kept crashing whenever I put in the orders! In the end, I only slept 20 minutes that night and as a result was too tired to post an entry Thursday night.
In other news, I got to operate yesterday! The operation itself was NOT glamorous at all, and in fact if I wrote what type of operation it was I'm pretty sure everyone would be disgusted. Yet it was a pretty cool feeling when we started the case and my attending said, "Do you think you can finish the rest of this operation?" He then left the room and I was the only person left in the room to finish the case. Wierd feeling! The scrub nurse was humming a song and I correctly identified the song as "Gold Digger" to which she replied, "Dr. Maturin, you're not so bad!" Speaking of gold, this is my Golden Weekend which means I don't have to go to hospital on both Saturday AND Sunday. Not that I don't like being an intern, but it's nice to be off for two days in a row!
Patients covered last call night: Around 30.
Currently reading: Greenfield's Chronic Pancreatitis chapter.
Currently watching: Pirates of the Carribbean (tonight)
Next blog: Expected the evening of Tuesday July 11th after my fourth night of call.
posted by Stephen Maturin @ 7/08/2006 07:46:00 AM
2 Comments:
At Sat Jul 08, 04:11:00 PM 2006,
Anonymous said…
great read. hint to dr maturin: work at the intern level abhors a vacuum it will always fill your call night.
At Wed Jul 12, 08:05:00 AM 2006,
Anonymous said…
interesting info. i love the story about that STAT thing...too funny. i am sure, with time you'll figure everyhting out!!
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