ED

I’ve contemplated for sometime about whether I should continue writing what I really felt like penning down yesterday. A part of me felt that if I did, I might tarnish the image of ED when a part of me knows that there’s so much more to ED than just these not-so-great experiences.

What happened today finally launched it to the pages of my blog.

I’ve never felt more taken advantage of until after being in ED. It is to a point of being absolutely ridiculous how SOME (mind you, only a handful) speak as though they could never function fully without the help of house-officers around. And ALL I could think in my mind is that they were able to function before without us, it should be no different than it is today. Fine. Maybe more patients have showed up at our doors… but to sink so much to the point of almost helplessness? Surely that can’t be!

Of all the times where I almost felt like crying at work, two out of the three have happened when I was in ED. (The first occurred when I was in Orthopaedics when some bossy MO from Anaes comes saying the most insulting things just because my consultant wants to use the OT for an emergency op). How do I even begin to explain why I felt that way, what happened to make me feel so vulnerable emotionally…it’s difficult to. But usually I feel so when I personally believed I did no wrong but was simply accused of doing so. Yesterday I had to wheel a patient from my zone to the resuscitation zone. She was having an anaphylactic episode. All I did was walk beside the bed until we parked her into a cubicle. Now once we were there, I watched as the staff quickly put on her the necessary basic steps to resuscitation… oxygen, cardiac monitor, pulse oxymetry, etc etc. In the same time, I was passing over the story to my fellow colleague house officer, when out of the blue, the MO comes storming in the cubicle and raises her voice, questioning me why I had not passed the case over to her. I was stunned. It was unexpected and I had not even left the resus zone, how could she say that of me? How could she quickly jumped into conclusion that I was not going to pass the case over to her? Was she expecting me to run to her-highness’ lair at the counter to present the case whilst leaving my patient to be handled by the staff themselves? Perhaps she wanted that. I don’t know. I stumbled through the case presentation – clearly I wasn’t even thinking of what I was saying. As I went back to the counter to write what I had gathered from the patient, I had to literally blink back my forming tears. Yes, I’m a cry-baby. But I really felt like I did no wrong. I don’t know. that’s just me.

The message rang truer than ever when I received a text this morning from an MO about swallowing the pill and just persevering through this rotation. (Thanks Doc!) I really thought that was what I had to do for the remainder of the posting. Just suck it up and get myself out of trouble. (Although it looks like the opposite is about to happen… I am going back for night shift later to find out how much of deep poop I’m in, regarding some patient from the morning shift! UGH!).

However, not all negatives are said about ED. There are many other MOs who are friendly and more than willing to teach and help out. There are just some who well, are more concerned about getting their bums fire-free. Sigh.

I’m running out of time.. gotta really head back to the hospital now. I need to start hitting the books again too…. now I’ve got an mid-posting assessment to face up with end of the week. Sigh…