Blonde medic moment: number 1

Blonde medic moment: number 1

Ok, I've been thinking about how I can make sure I blog more even when I'm busy, and I've come to the conclusion that sometimes it might be better to write short posts about amusing moments even if they are not necessarily recent events or coming in chronological order with my main longer posts...


So here starts a new series of posts that I will slot in whenever I feel like it (and whenever they happen) "Blonde medic moments".


So, yeah, I'm pretty blonde in both a literal and metaphorical sense (however much I argue against the blonde stereotype when everyone else suggests it..), so sometimes on the wards I do some pretty stupid stuff, bad times perhaps but good blogging stories? Maybe :).

Blonde medic moment: number 1

An elderly care teaching ward round in third year...

So we are round an elderly lady's bed being taught by the consultant, there are only three of us and one of the other students is examining the patient who is sitting in her chair; I am the only student standing on the far side of the bed.

Now unfortunately the elderly care ward has a tendency to be very hot and whenever we  stand around a patients bed with the curtains pulled on that particular ward for some time I suffer from feeling really faint and like I'm actually going to faint or be sick (neither would probably be deemed particularly professional!).  So whenever I can I try to lean/ prop myself against things on the ward (eg. half sit on a radiator), perhaps not particularly professional either but when I feel like I'm about to faint I'll go for anything that might ease the faintness slightly! This ladies bed was unfortunately lacking in anything I could lean against and was incredibly hot and I was feeling awful, which is what lead to the first blonde moment (and probably chronologically was my first on the wards though certainly has not been the last!)....

As the patient was sitting in her chair, I decided to subtly lean slightly onto my hands which were on her bed (and yes I know, infection control wise I probably shouldn't have been but I promise that a) I had used alcohol gel on entering that patients bed area and b) It was that or potentially be sick on her bed..the greater infection control risk!).  Now what I hadn't realised as I did this was that firstly the patient had a special air mattress (not sure what her reasons were but special mattresses tend to be for reasons like stopping bed sores) and secondly that the valve was right near where I was standing...

Yes, you guessed it, suddenly there was a loud raspberrying sound and the bed started deflating rapidly before our eyes.  The other students were not touching the bed...

I didn't actually even try and say this... that probably wouldn't have gone down well!

The consultant was actually a very nice consultant and looked at me with a mixture of amusement, exasperation and pity as I turned beetroot and frantically (and unsuccessfully) tried to fiddle with the valve and stop the bed from deflating.  In the end he continued teaching and I had to sheepishly ask a nurse to re inflate the patients fully deflated bed after we were finished.  Not my finest moment but probably not my worst either... more to come in the future :p.

Patients bed didn't look dissimilar by the end...

So how would you describe that pain?

A long week. This week I have been "on take" twice and have been in for my earliest yet post take ward round at the horrific time of 7.15am. Ouch. It was actually quite cool in a way being in so early and wandering around MASU before they had even turned the main lights on. Our MASU (medical and surgical assesment unit - basically the first ward you end up on post A+E) has no windows so very hard for patients to work out what time of day it is and doesn't really help confused patients to get orientated. All the "daylight" is therefore created by bright white lights creating a very sterile hospital feel.

It was interesting to see the doctors who had clearly been on all night, they were a bit mroe casually dressed on the whole and often wearing scrub tops and trainers. I guess the patients you go to see in the middle of the night are the ones who are seriously sick and so aren't going care what you are wearing so you may as well stay comfortable.

"On take" as a medical student (or indeed doctor) refers to when your team is in charge of clerking in all of the new admissions and starting their treatment. As students we are supposed to spend a certain number of evenings/weekends doing this on certain rotations but realistically we never stay as many hours as the medical school wants us too as the doctors often sign us off early and tell us to go home because otherwise they feel obliged to teach us which takes up their time.

I was on take both one evening and Saturday afternoon/ evening this week. Its quite scary how much in the deep end we can get chucked in during these on takes, some doctors give us quite a lot of responsability when we clerk patients in and take our word for granted. Often our clerking in proformas end up in the patients notes which is quite strange when you see them there during the post take ward rounds being used as the main information. Sometimes I feel too young to be ready for this, other times it just makes be feel spun out about how grown up and mature we are expected to be. Yesterday I spent a long time clerking in a very lovely elderly patient (it only took a long time because she kept getting moved around or needing loo or having her relatives appear whilst I was trying to examine her). She was very lovely so I won't hold a grudge for the fact that she described her chest pain one way when talking to me and a completely different way when the doctor later came to see her with me which causes a completly different set of differential diagnoses to be most likely... The doctor didn't mind though and told me it always happens to him whenever he presents a patient to a consultant - when the consultant sees them the patient always says something completely different to the exact same set of questions.Patients you do not know how much power you have to make us look stupid in front of our superiors.

I was quite looking forward to seeing the bustle of a city A+E on a saturday night whilst on this on take.. but to be honest it was disappointingly empty and I ended up going home early again due to lack of patients for me to clerk.. I suppose I shouldn't really be disappointed about this as it means less people were ill last night which is a good thing, just not so much for my education or log book signings off, but I do realise thats not the important thing. Sometimes we get so obbessed with getting clincal skills signed off that it is easy to forget that.