Thursday, December 21, 2006

Last Night

So, I've just finished another set of quiet nights. Last night was the most interesting I think. I was mistakenly first on the list to go away and fully expected to do so. After the last two boring nights I actually thought it would be nice to go hang out somewhere else for a while. But no, the duty manager didnt have anywhere for me to go so I ended up floating round ICU for the night. We did some turns, made a tea trolley and sat round chatting for a while. Not long into the night I got a phone call from one of the ortho wards. The nurse on the phone seemed quite nice but a bit stressed. She told me that her patient was having an anaphylaxis and her doctors wouldn't come. She told me her sats and GCS were dropping. TRUCKS!!!!!!! I grabbed a reg and we headed up to sort it out. Immediately when we got there I could see that the patient was fine, she was warm, well perfused, ABC intact and told me she actually felt a bit better. The staff were probably in a worse state. The arrest trolley was there, but the airways box was still on the shelf. I did my assessment, covered up this poor lady who'd been left half naked while everyone was flapping and stood back to listen to the goings on. She had a SBP of over 240 and a ST around 120, sats were 89% on 5L. There was nearly nothing to suggest she was having an anaphylaxis. It was a good thing we came because the house surgeon (who I presume was extremely new to the job) was about to line her and give adrenaline. VERY VERY bad idea. More doctors arrived, the flapping carried on and eventually we left them to it. I like doing call away jobs, its so extremely different from a clinical emergency in the unit. It made me think I'd like to develop a better system for myself in those situations.
The rest of the night passed by pretty uneventfully. I was allocated to helping in the infectious room so that meant I dodged the burns room. I sneaked into the cardiac unit which was closed for the holidays to have a sleep. Theres a store room there that always has a huge pile of mattresses and is usually quite quiet. When I woke up I realised that there was someone else sleeping in the main bit. I tried to sneak past but I wasnt sneaky enough and I think I gave him a bit of a fright. The turns were all done by 530 and Helen let us go at 6.

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