Day 1: 0730 - 1830 10min lunch during meeting
Day 2: 0730 - 1900 No toilet break
Day 3: 0730 - 1930 No lunch and no toilet break
Scheduled Day 4: 0730 - 2130 Foreseeable no lunch, no toilet break and no dinner.
Showing posts with label summer 09. Show all posts
Showing posts with label summer 09. Show all posts
10 Feb 2010
4 Jan 2010
Killing me softly...
Another day, another palliative patient to discharge back to a nursing home. As per my usual conduct, i sneak into the room in search of the medication charts to write a discharge script, hoping that being palliative, the patient would be so out of it that i wouldn't have to talk to them.
I enter Mrs M's single room in my usual haste and spy her lying quietly in bed awake. Mrs M is a 93, stick thin, bed bound and no longer communicative granny who had stayed with us for 2 weeks, almost dying in 2 separate occasions despite our heroic attempts to dissuade her.
On her first attempt at death, she became unrousable and unresponsive. We gave up, ceased all medications and the next day she sat up asking for steak and meat pies.
With our hopes buoyed, we recommenced medications slowly and in her defiance, she made her second attempt at crossing over to the unknown. Quelled by her unyielding determination to pass on, we withdrew medications again and now her eyes are focused on me and following me with her gaze as i drift by the foot of her bed.
Having lost my chances of darting in and out without being rude, i walked up to her, gave her a smile and said hello as i rubbed her shoulder.
She looked back at me, smiled, gave me a cheeky wink and ripped a part of me asunder.
I can't withdraw treatment and let a patient who winked at me die!
Yet it was our meddlesome methods that were killing her.
I enter Mrs M's single room in my usual haste and spy her lying quietly in bed awake. Mrs M is a 93, stick thin, bed bound and no longer communicative granny who had stayed with us for 2 weeks, almost dying in 2 separate occasions despite our heroic attempts to dissuade her.
On her first attempt at death, she became unrousable and unresponsive. We gave up, ceased all medications and the next day she sat up asking for steak and meat pies.
With our hopes buoyed, we recommenced medications slowly and in her defiance, she made her second attempt at crossing over to the unknown. Quelled by her unyielding determination to pass on, we withdrew medications again and now her eyes are focused on me and following me with her gaze as i drift by the foot of her bed.
Having lost my chances of darting in and out without being rude, i walked up to her, gave her a smile and said hello as i rubbed her shoulder.
She looked back at me, smiled, gave me a cheeky wink and ripped a part of me asunder.
I can't withdraw treatment and let a patient who winked at me die!
Yet it was our meddlesome methods that were killing her.
29 Dec 2009
How i survived christmas...
So almost everyone on my previous list in their many variations, except item no 7 (thank god!), turned up over Christmas.
1. Fake hemiballismus old man with flaking fungal infections on his face who made writhing movements on his right side saying that he doesn't have control over it. I caught him out. Wanted to turf to psych, but just as we were about to do it, his stay in hospital finally gave him a hospital acquired infection and we had to keep him. Shit.
2. 20 year old girl who lived alone and drank too much alcohol on Christmas eve pretended to have ataxia and other subjective signs like vertigo and scored herself a CT Brain, which was completely normal of course, brought estranged mum and dad scurrying to bedside.
3. Middle aged man who recently broke up with girlfriend and lost $2k+ gambling while pissing drunk on Christmas Eve attempted suicide by ingesting 57 panadol tablets and 10 diclofenac. No idea why he bothered calling the ambulance if he was serious.
4. Chest pain. Not just one... What more do i need to say.
5. Obnoxious old lady from nursing home with sacral ulcers who refused meds, refused bloods, needed to be fed by hand, incontinent of faeces and urine, slapped, spat, smacked and yanked nursing stafff's hair while smearing faeces all over herself and bed. I didn't care if she was slightly demented, i told myself that if she even tried to hit me i'd hand lock her in self defense and then put her in restraints. Luckily, it didn't come down to that.
So our solution to the above plus the misery of working 16 hours a day without time for dinner break... chocolate, chips, biscuits, fruit juice... anything with carbs and fat.
Borrowing a phrase from an article in National Geographic which made a resonating impression on me: it's a wonder that i didn't detonate with the sheer force of rage.
1. Fake hemiballismus old man with flaking fungal infections on his face who made writhing movements on his right side saying that he doesn't have control over it. I caught him out. Wanted to turf to psych, but just as we were about to do it, his stay in hospital finally gave him a hospital acquired infection and we had to keep him. Shit.
2. 20 year old girl who lived alone and drank too much alcohol on Christmas eve pretended to have ataxia and other subjective signs like vertigo and scored herself a CT Brain, which was completely normal of course, brought estranged mum and dad scurrying to bedside.
3. Middle aged man who recently broke up with girlfriend and lost $2k+ gambling while pissing drunk on Christmas Eve attempted suicide by ingesting 57 panadol tablets and 10 diclofenac. No idea why he bothered calling the ambulance if he was serious.
4. Chest pain. Not just one... What more do i need to say.
5. Obnoxious old lady from nursing home with sacral ulcers who refused meds, refused bloods, needed to be fed by hand, incontinent of faeces and urine, slapped, spat, smacked and yanked nursing stafff's hair while smearing faeces all over herself and bed. I didn't care if she was slightly demented, i told myself that if she even tried to hit me i'd hand lock her in self defense and then put her in restraints. Luckily, it didn't come down to that.
So our solution to the above plus the misery of working 16 hours a day without time for dinner break... chocolate, chips, biscuits, fruit juice... anything with carbs and fat.
Borrowing a phrase from an article in National Geographic which made a resonating impression on me: it's a wonder that i didn't detonate with the sheer force of rage.
24 Dec 2009
My Christmas Wish
It's Christmas and as a diabolical (and erhem! conspicuous) plan by HR to pay me back for working unrostered overtime, i'm scheduled to work the long weekend.
I don't celebrate Christmas. It doesn't hold any particular significance for me except for boxing day sales, which, much to my chagrin, i will miss this year just as i, finally, have sufficient financial capacity to splurge.
However, even the importance of that pales in comparison to the wish of having a good weekend at work.
The week began with being the admitting team and accumulating patients at an insane rate. As the week slowly ticked away, the medical ward pushed and laboured towards getting patients home for the festive season. As the days went by, so my desperation and desolation grew when come Christmas Eve, the ward hardly had any empty beds.
Tonight as i go to sleep i will be wishing that the stress of Christmas not precipitate the influx of these particular demographics on my ward:
1. Freeloaders: homeless, poor people who come into hospital for free food.
2. The desperate lonelies: people with no friends or family who want to have an excuse to be around other people.
3. Malingerers: Druggies who forgot to stock up on happy pills while their regular opiod/benzo-prescribing GP is off to the Caribbeans.
4. Accidental overdosers: Druggies who figured that hey, it's Christmas, perfect reason to get higher than normal and end up with a GCS of 3.
5. Neurotics: People who are so disagreeable that even their own family shuns them, and in their morose disappointment, develop psychogenic chest pain in order to bring family rushing to their "death beds" in guilt.
6. Alcoholics: Alcohol induced DKA, HONK, Hepatic encephalopathy, self asphyxiation... anything!
7. That god-forsaken, ungrateful, intellectually disabled, obnoxious, self righteous, borderline, bogan son of a bitch whom we just discharged yesterday. I swear i will feed him panadol to tip him over the edge of his liver cirrhosis if he decides to represent for the 4th time due to non compliance with medications.
So, as long as these people stay the hell away from my ward... it will be a pleasant weekend.
Merry Christmas everyone!
I don't celebrate Christmas. It doesn't hold any particular significance for me except for boxing day sales, which, much to my chagrin, i will miss this year just as i, finally, have sufficient financial capacity to splurge.
However, even the importance of that pales in comparison to the wish of having a good weekend at work.
The week began with being the admitting team and accumulating patients at an insane rate. As the week slowly ticked away, the medical ward pushed and laboured towards getting patients home for the festive season. As the days went by, so my desperation and desolation grew when come Christmas Eve, the ward hardly had any empty beds.
Tonight as i go to sleep i will be wishing that the stress of Christmas not precipitate the influx of these particular demographics on my ward:
1. Freeloaders: homeless, poor people who come into hospital for free food.
2. The desperate lonelies: people with no friends or family who want to have an excuse to be around other people.
3. Malingerers: Druggies who forgot to stock up on happy pills while their regular opiod/benzo-prescribing GP is off to the Caribbeans.
4. Accidental overdosers: Druggies who figured that hey, it's Christmas, perfect reason to get higher than normal and end up with a GCS of 3.
5. Neurotics: People who are so disagreeable that even their own family shuns them, and in their morose disappointment, develop psychogenic chest pain in order to bring family rushing to their "death beds" in guilt.
6. Alcoholics: Alcohol induced DKA, HONK, Hepatic encephalopathy, self asphyxiation... anything!
7. That god-forsaken, ungrateful, intellectually disabled, obnoxious, self righteous, borderline, bogan son of a bitch whom we just discharged yesterday. I swear i will feed him panadol to tip him over the edge of his liver cirrhosis if he decides to represent for the 4th time due to non compliance with medications.
So, as long as these people stay the hell away from my ward... it will be a pleasant weekend.
Merry Christmas everyone!
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