Wannabe MD: "Turn your head and cough, please!" Day 15- So, can I start?

Days just never go as planned...especially in medicine.

It is almost never ever a 9 to 5 job. I thought I'd be up and out of there by 2PM the latest to meet up with a friend to go to the pool. Boy was I wrong (I still made it to the pool but about 4 hours later than planned). Between longer surgeries and lost surgeons, everything took longer than planned today.

During the morning meeting I asked the chief where he would like me to work for the day (offering my help in the other departments since I knew there were less doctors). He asked me what I wanted to do. Well, if possible, I told him I wanted to jump between the different stations and just see where I could help out. He said that would be fine.

OR:
I started out in the OR. Since the DaVinci set up is not that exciting, I headed up to ward.

Ward:
All I could help with was drawing blood and clarifying a question the staff had been dealing with for days (I only knew the answer because I had helped with the operation. Who knows how long it would have taken them to find out had I not just happened to be standing there.)

Outpatient:
I headed to Outpatient to code some patient files for billing purposes and headed back to the OR.

OR:
The DaVinci was still going on. I was waiting for my operation to start. It was going to take place in the room next door. So first I had to wait for the OBGYN operation happening there end. Once it did, I checked the room about every 5 minutes to see if we could get started. It wasn't until about 5 checks later that someone informed me that the DaVinci anesthesiology team would also be doing my operation so we had to wait for the DaVinci operation to be done. great.

At this point, the surgeons had removed a part of the prostate and sent it to pathology to see if it had been removed with enough safety distance around the tumor. Since it was taking so long, chief and the attending went and had lunch.....while we sat in the OR room and waited.

About half an hour later we finally got the call. I was hoping they'd say we are good to go and we could close up and move on with the program. Wrong. The whole tissue was still filled with tumor so more had to be removed from the patient. This added an extra hour to an already overdrawn operation. great. While all of this was happening, I just saw my plans of pool and sun go down the drain.

Eventually the operation was done and I started setting up my operation with the nurses. We started paging Dr.H to join us since he was the first surgeon and I was first assistant. We couldn't reach him. great.

We called the wards, paged him about 6 times, called other doctors asking if they'd seen him. Nothing.

I got scrubbed in and started draping the patient (something I've never done and was happy to do). So there I was, scrubbed in at the table, ready to go with an OR nurse at my side. It was tempting to just take the scalpel in my hand and get this party started!

The other Dr.H came and we opened the patient while still waiting for Dr.H's arrival.

He eventually came (his pager supposedly didn't work) and took over from the other Dr.H.

Finally we were operating (removed a kidney) and I got to help quite a lot! I didn't even notice time pass because I had something to focus on!

As soon as we were done, we got the patient moved and I...was...outta....there! I hurried and went to hang out with my friends at the pool (on the way I took a ginormous detour. Story of my day...everything took longer than planned.)

While running all around the hospital and having to change my clothes for the different departments, I decided to present to you the hospital life style. With topics you would find in a magazine, here presented in a hospital theme.

The New Workout Plan:

Stairs, stairs, stairs = Good cardio!