So, I try to arrive a little early most days to make sure the patient list is accurate and everything is ready for us to round.
A couple of days ago I did just that, and ten minutes before everyone else was due to arrive, I was riding alone in the elevator watching the floors pass by.
*ping* and the elevator stops on the ninth floor. My colleague peers into the elevator, and says "Oh, good, it's you." He's been on call all night and looks harassed.
"Have a good night?"
He grins and hands me two phones and two pagers. "Here, take all of this; Ali and I are heading into surgery. There's a guy who got stabbed in the heart and he's bleeding again... give them to the team taking over."
"Cool! Have fun!" The doors glide shut and I keep going up. And as I arrive where we round and note that our team has not yet arrived, you can guess what happens:
"beep, beep, ring, beep ring!!!!"
GAH! Trauma!!
All I could think was oh-no-I-have-everyone's-pager-how-on-earth-will-they-know-there's-a-trauma-I-am-just-the-medical-student-I-think-we-may-be-needing-a-tad-more-backup-than-that!!!
Life is fun. Sometimes it really does like to bite you in the ass at 6:56 am.
ClustrMap
About Me
- Red Rabbit
- Red Rabbit wants to be a trauma surgeon. Someday, eventually. But in the meantime, there is finishing medical school, getting into a surgery programme (please, please, please!!!), learning to snowboard again, and generally enjoying life.
2 comments:
Just found your blog, trying to read a few more posts before studying neuro. Sounds like you really love trauma, it's great to find something you think you'll like doing for the rest of your life (eventhough the hours suck and sleep is in short order). So, how many floors did you have to go to to find the trauma team members whose pagers you were holding?
Hi medstudentitits, cool blog yourself! Weeeelll... actually one of the phones rang and it was my senior saying he was stuck in traffic. So I booted it down to the OR where I discovered that the trauma staff's pager had gone off and he'd sent his residents down ahead.
So I headed down and found that really everything was under control, the ED staff were well able to handle things (of course), and the overnight residents handled things.
The guy in the OR was taken care of by the cardiac team and the staff ;)
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