small medic mini-blog

surgery

was with the same reg on my last set of on calls! lucky me.

unfortunately one of us is turning out to be a magnet; had plenty of unwell patients. was this the on calls where he decided a very frail patient needed a relook laparotomy? maybe. he seems to have at least one going to emergency surgery every time I'm on call with him.

if you wonder why healthcare staff have such superstition: we have so little locus of control it feels better to blame it on someone saying the Q word or someone being a magnet rather than a strained system.

nonetheless.

have seen many people's bums and carefully squished many people's abdomens. learned a lot. got some pointed but well meaning feedback from said reg.

the ol' career instnct is pointing towards ICU as a way to: * maintain medic diagnostic skills * airway skills * much physiology * learn some surgery-adjacent skills

#surgery #career

my registrar and I sat in ED at 3am and he just went “I want to cry” I made an unintelligible sound and we moved on

heck of a night to finish on, first he went to theatre and left his bleep

cue loads of angry referrers leaving passive aggressive mesages in the notes

then the urine analyser stopped working, then the BLOOD analyser stopped working????

then a crash bleep for “cardiac arrest in CT” and the reg thought it was one of our patients

it sure beats the night where three people got unwell the hour before handover tho

or when I went to assess a patient, left the ward, and was bleeped 5 mins later with a much more worrying update

overall still enjoyed it though, much better vibes than medical nights – I guess partly because we know what's going on with each person on the list, the chance to go between the wards and ED, and seeing patients get better...

#surgery