My last duty in Ospital ng Muntinlupa was just pure hell. When I arrived on that Saturday morning, the PICU has one patient and the nursery had its usual fill of intubated babies. It LOOKs benign at that vantage point. The nursery is quite full so I phoned the ER doctors to stop admitting preterm mothers because I don't have the space for them. I don't want to raise my voice to another E.R. doctor who keeps on admitting preterm babies even though the nursery is in code blue. I hope they know what code blue means. It means no more friggin' SPACE! Its better to keep those babies INSIDE their mother's womb until they find a place where there's an available incubator. So better send them out. It's advent anyway. Well, I am not saying to give birth in a manger. Their babies will not survive in a regular nursery, what do you expect in a bed of hay?
Surprisingly, two private patients are giving birth to two preterms. TWO??! So, I conferred with my consultants regarding the lack of incubators in the nursery. The only option for us is to maximize management in the current situation. You know, PGH style. Well, the first one arrested after a few minutes. He/she had multiple congenital anomalies including an ambiguous genitalia and a huge abdominal mass. The other one was okay. I am glad that it was still eary and the consultants were there to help me out.
So by the half of my shift, I admitted 3 in the wards and caught 5 babies in the nursery. That time I was DONE. I was dead tired writing all those notes and checking up on the rest of my patients. But NO! After a few hours, I was admitted with 2 more patients and 3 more catches in the nursery. I was a bit evil because if its a term pregnancy, I just let the nurses to catch the baby. I just write the order and make sure that the baby is fine.
My first three admissions were simple cases of acute gastroenteritis. Fine. Fill me up with AGE patients. That's easy. Hydrate and send stool samples. Well, I have to tailor my management according to the degree of dehydration then WALAH...discharge. But later that evening, the ER told me that I have a case of sepsis (infection in the blood)and she will be admitted in the wards. When I examined the patient, she doesn't look septic. She looks septic AND toxic. Neck stiffness, spontaneous bleeding all over, rapid breathing, tense fontanelles. I immediately transferred her to the ICU. Upon questioning the mother, the baby was born at home and did not have any vitamin K injection. There was bleeding in her umbilical stump and spontaneous bruising. The moral lesson for today: Make sure your baby has vitamin K after birth. I left her intubated because her pupils (the black dot in your eyes) were unequal. Its a sign of brain hemorrhage. Poor baby.
By 2AM, I was dead. I couldn't keep my eyelids open. What's worse with this duty is that I chose to wear this black leather shoes. It's nothing expensive, local brand even but it's sleek and trendy. I have nothing else to wear with my black slacks. After a while, it was giving me hell. I did not have any other shoes to fit my outfit so I stuck with this one. Beauty before duty, my friend.
I woke up at 6 the next day, did the rest of my paper work, made the usual morning rounds and prepared my endorsement sheet. That wretched endorsement sheet!! They changed it!! Now we have a clear book with multi-colored tabs and index card in it where I should write my patient's cases in individual index cards and sort it by location. It gets worse: I have to write in pencil. So I have to lug around a pencil, a ballpen (for writing chart orders) and a rubber eraser. I absolutely hate it!! It's cute, yes, but its a FUCKING WASTE OF TIME!
On my 25th hour in the hospital I was done. I have to get clearance from the nurses in order to get my pay, so I did that. When I went down to the cashier's window, the line was 5 persons long!! Ugh. So I have to stand up for another 20 minutes in my el cheapo black shoes. Waah. After I got my 1,575...I marched back to the call room, turned the aircon on full and passed out.
Do you think I should start applying for a call center by now?
No comments:
Post a Comment