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...