Not My Hill

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The journey through second year of residency is an interesting one. As I’ve mentioned before, we are tasked with two major, new responsibilities: performing most procedures and seeing a much greater volume of patients. We’ve all gone through a substantial adjustment period. It’s been hard.

One of these journeys is toward two, or greater, patients per hour. I hit this milestone rather infrequently. In fact, it is about as likely for me to achieve this as I am to win a game of Oregon Trail. It is far more likely that I will die of dysentery, or make it no further than Fort Collins before my oxen quit on me. Continue reading →

Of NARH and NARS

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The title will make sense later. Trust me.

As I’ve mentioned before, I split most of my residency training time between two hospitals: a large tertiary care center that has all the bells and whistles, and an understaffed county hospital that on occasion struggles to perform basic functions of a healthcare facility, such as checking routine vital signs or (spoiler alert) admitting patients.

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Discharge to Home

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When you go to the ER for medical care and are discharged home, almost every ER will send you home with “discharge instructions.” In a perfect world, this would contain information that is actually relevant to the patient’s medical condition and cover what was done in the ER, the results of lab tests and imaging studies, and “return precautions” – when to come back to the ER. Continue reading →

BUFF and TURF

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I am now done with my ICU month. I would just like to reiterate, again, that being on 30-hour call every third day for an entire month is total and complete bullshit that ruins your body and soul and no one should have to do it.

I have also been advised by legal counsel, also known as one-half of the Bringers of Life, that in my previous post I apparently ran a small risk of getting in trouble. I am not sure why; perhaps this is because I reference in somewhat pointed terms that one of my hospital sites (the Not A Real Hospital one) is run about as efficiently as a traffic jam. Continue reading →

The Nights Watch

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Hi. I have just completed a stint of night shifts – twelve in the last fourteen days – and I feel like a moldy, rotted potato.

As I write this, I’m trying to “flip back to days” for a regular day shift tomorrow, as the cruel scheduling gods have elected to grant me one day of work during normal people hours (albeit on a Saturday) before switching back to a third week of uninterrupted nights. Continue reading →

The Liver ICU

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The second year of residency begins. The new interns have arrived (we have already lightly haz- uh, introduced them to residency) and are bright-eyed and fun to work with… just as I go onto off service rotations for two months.

Those of you who are loyal readers of this site (hello Grandmas, parents, and random fan club from South Africa) may notice a website name change. “Status Hazmaticus” proved too difficult to remember. I also realized that since my quest to complete my medical training has been marked by a tremendously amount of bumbling, falling, and general clumsiness, a more accurate website name – “Crashing Resident” – was in order.

Crashing Resident is also a play on an existing terrific website, Crashing Patient, which is an online textbook for emergency medicine and critical care. Continue reading →

Intern Year is Over

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The new interns started their orientation this week.

I say this mostly because it means I am just a few short days away from no longer being “the intern.” This is fantastic news, mostly because it relieves me of the duty of explaining to non-medical people the vestigial and archaic distinction between an intern and a resident. Just so everyone (grandma) remembers:

I made that diagram. Aren’t you impressed?

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Night Float

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I am back in the Cardiac Care Unit this rotation. If you recall my earlier tribulations from my previous CCU block, this means I am once again forced to Constantly Replete Potassium. I have never really forgotten how much I hated the CCU – all other rotations are judged in relative fractions of CCU terribleness – but I had, at least, airbrushed out the violent rage induced by being interrupted every eleven seconds about electrolytes.

(This post is, in fact, not about electrolyte repletion, although there will be frequent references. You may all breathe a sigh of relief.) Continue reading →