"Every night around the nation, a small but dedicated group of young men and women leave their homes as the country is engulfed in nightfall and begin their journeys. They are our sons, our daughters, our brothers and sisters. They are the Night doctors of the public health system and this is their story...
Dr J is a 24 yr old resident doctor at The Zoo. Like many other of his colleagues, he has just completed his internship and is currently undertaking his set of ward nights where he will be placed in charge of half of a major tertiary referral centre between the hours of 10:30pm and 8:30am. During the day the hospital is teeming with hundreds of doctors but at night it is just him, the intern covering the other wards and one medical registrar running the wards.
His night begins with a call from the renal ward. They have a patient who was recently transferred out of ICU who needs some attention. He has had a major bleed inside his brain and is now complaining of a headache similar to the previous bleeding. However before our young doctor can asses this man, he is called away to the cardiothoracic ward where a post-operative patient is having an abnormal heart rhythm.
Whilst giving the nurses on the wards further instructions on how to control this mans heart rhythm, Dr J is again called, this time by the cardiology ward to assess a patient who is bleeding profusely.
When he arrives he learns that this man has dementia and today has had a pacemaker inserted into his chest. Dr J carefully peels back the dressing to find that the wound has actually re-opened up and this patient is actively bleeding.
[cut to ad break]
"Welcome back to our look into the lives of young night doctors and their trials and tribulations. When we left our young Dr J, he was trying to save his patient from bleeding to death by applying prssure to his wound, however after 30 minutes the wound is still bleeding and it looks like he will have to take more definitive action
[cue dramatic music]
Dr J has run down to the Emergency Department and gotten hold of some suturing kits to stitch up the wound to stop the bleeding. With careful precision we cleans the bleeding and pulls the open wound together and immeadiately the bleeding stops. Another great save by Dr J. But before he has time to bask in the satisfaction of helping another patient he is whisked off to see another surgical patient who might have a clot in her lungs..."
You'll have to excuse my bad homage to RPA style TV shows... but ward nights have been rough. Compunded by the fact that when the cardiology morning nurses found out I'd stitched up a bleeding pacemaker site the conversation went a little south:
"Um Dr J, you did call the cardiology registrar before you stitched him up didn't you?"
"Um no..."
"Please tell me you asked the med reg first then?"
"Ahhh. no?"
"[Expletives that can't be repeated] Oh no! Dr Cardiology-boss is gonna freak out! He only ever uses pressure to sto the bleeding... he NEVER stitches them up! He's gonna go nuts!"
You kinda feel like you're helping people and doing your job well and then you get a nice big kick in the head to remind you that you're still just a resident and belong at the bottom of the pecking order. I can understand if this boss was annoyed with me cos I did something dangerous, but the fact is that this patient was bleeding and I did what many other doctors would have done... just not to his preference.
The politics of hospital make this job SO worthwhile... only 9 months to go!
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2 comments:
sounds like you made the right decision at a quite frightening and critical time. don't worry bout the nurses. did u expect them to say something positive?
Hang in there, J. Quick thinking is hard to come by in this world.
God bless.
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