Friday, August 08, 2008

Chronicles of a Confused Doctor 3

Two days and I've missed a post already!

Got up a little more confident on my 2nd day, went in and got stuff ready for a registrar ward round. Morning went fairly well, had my first consultant ward round close to lunch, which didn't really count, as we only saw 5 patients.

1 of whom was pretty interesting; she was nice to talk to, and pretty healthy in herself, but was suspected to have a fairly ominous inflammation of the blood vessels.

Went for teaching late, we need to fill in forms to say that we can ask patients for consent. It seems as if our life will be filling in plenty of forms from now on.

Afternoon saw me getting interrupted with doing ward jobs by a relative of a patient who wanted me to see him because he was worried. Its a sad indication of how jaded I am that I was immediately thinking of how this would all be a case of reassuring the patient and his relatives that all was well, and that the worst thing that could happen was that I'd finish later than usual.

It turned out to be a suspicious sounding account of chest pain, that led to more and more tests and resulted in me handing the patient over to the house officer on call for nights. Just goes to show, I guess.

Friday was by comparison the most free day I'd had. Highlight was getting all my bloods and cannulas in without a hitch. And also that we chipped in to help one another finish on time (well, an hour later, but still...) and being able to head to the pub across the road for a well earned drink and a gabble about the 3 days of work.

'This feels like the first weekend I've earned in 4 years'

A good lie in tmrw...sounds just what I need:-)

Thanks for your prayers, and to the various people in UK starting their first week, well done for surviving!

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