A&E so far
I’m now into my second week of my A&E elective. So far I’ve seen a nice mix of things from painful hands, shoulders, ribs, knees, ankles and feet to COPD, DVTs, falls, chest and abdo pain to a cardiac arrest we were sadly unable to resuscitate. Quite a lot for just over a week of starting.
Last week was particularly warm outside but despite this the heating remained on for reasons that escape me. This turned the department into a sauna and I was struggling to cope. Now that we’re back to rain, the heating has been turned off and I’m almost feeling cold!
The attitude from staff has been excellent, everyone is happy for us to get involved. I’ve had the chance to practice some cannulation and blood gases. I’ve also done a fair number of venepuncture but this doesn’t quite excite me to the same extent. Indeed for the start of this week I’ll be working as a phleb from 7-9am and then in A&E from 9 till 4ish pm. Quite a long day! To top it off I plan to cycle in on those days so I should be fairly fit by the end of this (and shattered!).
The hospital is one of the few with a helicopter landing pad. Twice now I have been out with the brightly coloured jacket to receive the patient. As yet none has been terribly serious and I’ve just been happy to familiarise myself with procedures. It is probably only a matter of time though before we get something a little bit scary coming in and it’ll be interesting to see how it’s managed. I have take two of my own helicopter trip this Saturday which I’m looking forward to.
I plan on spending the Saturday night in the department to see what the infamous Glasgow population can get up to. That also happens to be T in the Park weekend (which I’m sadly not attending) so maybe it’ll be a little more tame than normal. We’ll see.
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