Categories: uncategorized
Date: 22 March 2006 06:11:43
So today was hospital day. After our morning tutorial, we had 3 hours of unstructured time. One of my classmates discovered that her grandfather was in the emergency department having some stitches taken out of his head so we went to watch that and had a good time learning about stitching techniques and removal and stuff from the nurse practitioner. Once grandpa's stitches were finished we decided to lurk around emergency for a while and see what happened. A doctor said that we could follow him around (hurrah!) so we followed him to an elderly man who'd had a fall at his nursing home.
"So do you guys know how to insert a cannula yet?".... Argh!! We explained that we'd only done it on fake arms but the doctor said I could have a go!
It was a difficult first patient as he had a habit of screaming and jerking his arm away when you inserted the needle (not just when I did it, when the real doctor did it too) so it was not a successful first cannulation attempt but that's ok. I have now stuck a sharp object into a patient!
I think the adrenaline rush of doing something real was all a bit much because then my ears started ringing and I felt like I was going to faint. Luckily I managed to look calm and collected and said I was on my way to my tutorial (which was true) and made it out into the waiting room to put my head down and wait for my ears to stop ringing.
It's weird because I have no needle phobia and have no problem with blood tests or vaccinations or thinking about/watching needle stuff...eh.
So that was stressful. But I'm glad I did it. I would have preferred not to have then been chosen on the spur of the moment to take an abdominally focused history of a patient in front of my tutorial group as we have not done any abdomen work yet. But such is life. And I survived.
All in all a good day. Hopefully I won't nearly faint every time I need to cannulate a patient. That would make doctoring in a hospital a bit difficult!! I'm going to go and hang out the emergency department on a regular basis and hopefully there will be more opportunities to practice!