A day in the ER

Last night was bad. A night full of nightmares and needless to say, when my alarm went off at 6 am, it was hard for me to even open my eyes.

I still had time ahead of me. My shift was not supposed to start until 8 am and that left me with almost 2 hours to get ready. Unfortunately, I was so tired that I fell back asleep and woke up at 7.45 am! Of course I was late. And of course, of all days, it was today that there had to be a clinical skills workshop for the medical officers. Medical students were also asked to joined.

I arrived at the skills lab 15 minutes late and when I entered, everyone looked at me! Awkward! 

Anyway, it was actually quite interesting and a variety of scenarios were simulated and the management plan briefly outlined.

A funny or not so funny simulation was that once the patient/dummy was pronounced dead, after a while, the mannequin started to make some noise. You can imagine the uproar in the class! And the specialist indeed said that it once happened to him that after failed resuscitation, he declared the death of a patient, who somehow revived a while later! And the patient remained alive for another 24 hours before moving on.

Indeed, it has happened various other times and this phenomenon is actually called Lazarus syndrome. It is basically when a patient's blood circulation restores itself after a failed attempts of resuscitations.

Later in the afternoon, during the ward rounds, the consultant also mentioned that he heard of a similar case whereby a dead patient was sent to the mortuary and the patient came back to life! 

This is why he said, that after declaring the death of a patient, he/she should be monitored for another hour or two to confirm the death of the patient.

This is starting to sound spooky now! Let's move on, I do not want to have anymore night mares tonight.

The rest of the day was quite interesting as well. I did have an opportunity to see patients coming in with various conditions, such as atrial fibrillation, injuries, sepsis, ect... 

Another story I want to share with you was that I breeched the universal precaution today! And I didn't even have a choice :(

One of the doctors was doing an ABG and I was standing somewhere nearby. After obtaining the blood sample, she rushed me to apply pressure on the puncture site...of course, I was without gloves! *Scream* I made sure I was not bleeding from my fingers and washed my hands thoroughly afterwards. I wonder why some doctors rarely wear gloves or even worse, wash their hands before and after touching patients!

The universal precautions definitely need to be reinforced! 

A lesson I learnt today was to make my own judgement as other doctors can also make mistakes. As one of my friends once told me, I have to trust my own clinical examination and judgement and not let myself be biased with what others have to say. Indeed, from now on, no matter how tired I am, I will think before I agree with the doctors!

There are of course many many more stories in the ER that happens but if I keep on writing, the post will never be over...

I wonder what the rest of week 2 in the ER has in store! So, stay tune for more :)