Today is shift #3 at Methodist ED....12 hours. No big deal as long as there are patients today.
My last shift was Wednesday, overnight....12am-8am. I was lucky to see 5 patients. Nights like that are wonderful for the residents...chill, relaxed. But for me, I would describe it another way: long! At some point during the night, you start to feel like a stapler...a piece of equipment just waiting to be used. Every once in a while someone glances over and sees you sitting there, waiting... yet they quickly continue their conversation about nothingness with the other residents while you continue to stand there. I had nights like these in 3rd year as well. Terrible nights. I would rather have patients coming out of the woodwork with shady complaints of back pain....or a drunk patient. At least they are entertaining and make history gathering fun. Unfortunately in medicine, and especially in the emergency department you never know how a night will turn out...whether it will be extremely busy or painfully slow. My luck turned into the latter.
Let me stop being a downer and say that there were 2 positives for the night. One, I was able to do an abdominal ultrasound on a gentleman with right upper quadrant pain. The 2nd year resident could not locate his gallbladder and after about 15 minutes gave up. He did allow me to continue to try, and after about 5 minutes of my own skilled probe work, I found it!! (Thanks Maimo for the skills you taught me). Unfortunately, I did not know how to use the U/S machine...they are all different. So, I could only save pictures....no measuring...no sweeping pictures. The resident was very impressed though :)
The second positive....got to see my resident sew a tongue laceration on an elderly lady with possible tongue cancer. She was hemorraging from the mouth, coughing up blood....after 3 sutures, no more blood. I never saw that before, so it was a nice experience. Now I am ready to conquer my own tongue lac in the future!!!
I am hoping that today makes up for Wednesday night. I'm thinking Sunday, nice day out, bound to be some accidents requiring suturing....and residents ALWAYS seem to want the medical student to suture. Not sure why that is but I love suturing. I can see myself as a resident doing all my own sutures...sorry medical students but this is all mine!!! HAHA!!
Of course because I am working until 11pm I miss out on True Blood. Now I have to wait until tomorrow to see Sookie :(
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