#22: My heart beat a little faster
I'm starting to see different themes to my call nights. The previous call night was characterized by fever work-ups, and Saturday's call was characterized by cardiac arrhythmias. The first one happened when I was talking on the phone and I heard out of the corner of my consciousness: "Anesthesia to the CCU." I thought about it for a second because we had a patient in the CCU but that patient was already intubated so I didn't think that patient would have an acute event. The next thing I heard was "Stephen Maturin report to the CCU." Holy crap! Did I just get overhead paged on the hospital-wide overhead? I ran down to the CCU and it turned out that my chief resident had paged me because we had worked a code on the same patient two weeks ago - the last time we shocked the patient but this time she had a implanted defibrillator so she probably got shocked again.
The next second I got paged to another patient's room for rapid heart rate. The patient had an extensive history of cardiac disease and so we hooked up the defibrillator to his chest but by the time we hooked it up to his chest he had gotten out of the arrhythmia. Luckily my senior resident stopped by the room and her previous plan was to start a new medication in case this patient had the arrhythmia again (he had previously had several episodes) and so I didn't have to figure out what to do to treat the patient.
I've been pretty confident in what to do in most situations as an intern on call but it turns out that I don't really know what to do in the case of cardiac problems. It's a pretty terrifying experience and I really need to read a little this weekend about what to do in these sorts of situations.
Last call nights Saturday, September 23rd
Amount of sleep last call night: 90 minutes.
Currently reading: Greenfield's Chapter on Crohn's Disease (still)
Currently watching: America's Test Kitchen "BBQ Pulled Pork".
Next call night: Wednesday, September 27th.
The next second I got paged to another patient's room for rapid heart rate. The patient had an extensive history of cardiac disease and so we hooked up the defibrillator to his chest but by the time we hooked it up to his chest he had gotten out of the arrhythmia. Luckily my senior resident stopped by the room and her previous plan was to start a new medication in case this patient had the arrhythmia again (he had previously had several episodes) and so I didn't have to figure out what to do to treat the patient.
I've been pretty confident in what to do in most situations as an intern on call but it turns out that I don't really know what to do in the case of cardiac problems. It's a pretty terrifying experience and I really need to read a little this weekend about what to do in these sorts of situations.
Last call nights Saturday, September 23rd
Amount of sleep last call night: 90 minutes.
Currently reading: Greenfield's Chapter on Crohn's Disease (still)
Currently watching: America's Test Kitchen "BBQ Pulled Pork".
Next call night: Wednesday, September 27th.
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