Chronicles of a Confused Doctor 2

Woke up feeling nothing like wanting to start work. Bed was warm, it was raining outside, etc.

Arrived and was asked to prescribe morphine to a patient. Blur. Patient was left off it due to worries that it would suppress his respiration. Compromised by prescribing another painkiller and promised to come back.

Arrived in time to start a ward round with a ST doc who happened to be Malaysian. Both of us being new to the ward, the round took longer than usual, the most irritating thing being that my network password refused to work.

Finished nearly at 1pm, did a couple of blood gases, missed the first and wasn't too convinced by my 2nd attempt, but the machine read it, so wasn't too put out. Took off for 45mins and missed my 2nd ward round which I was convinced would start later.

Came in halfway, the consultant was pretty good about it. Had a ton of ward jobs to complete after that, mostly mundane stuff like drug prescriptions for pts to go home with.

Most exciting point of the day was being bleeped for a patient whose potassium levels had gone up for apparently no reason. Took and sent off a repeat blood test and promised I would review the ECG results. Was pretty certain that the Twaves looked higher especially when comparing to prev ECGs but the reg wasn't convinced.

When the results came back, the levels were even higher than what had been before. Technically I knew what to do, but wasn't convinced about writing stuff down, so had to bleep the reg and confirm treatment to bring potassium levels down. Found the hospital formulary to be a great help.

Drug round time came around, and because 3 of us house officers on the ward had been busy doing other jobs, and had not rewritten drug cards, the medicine round by the nurses ground to a halt while the 3 of us sat in a corner and frantically rewrote the cards.

Ended up going back a couple of hours later than usual. Chances are tmrw will be even more hectic.

To do:
- sort out network password
- Read up on pulmonary function test requesting and indications (what have i been doing for the last 5 years??)


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