Wednesday 22 April 2009

Hello again!

Back to abortion later...I'm back on the wards! Hurrah!  It's a brand spanking new hospital and I'm doing Respiratory medicine first then vascular surgery.  I've missed the hospital, lectures are boring and you learn so much interacting with patients.

I was reminded a couple of weeks ago about how weird being a medical student can be.  You don't really know anything and you've not done many procedures but you are referred to as a 'Colleague' by senior consultants and patients seem to trust you implicitly!  Anyway, I had been asked to put a cannula into a patient, should look something like this:

It was all going well, I'd got the flashback of blood which told me that was in the vein (hurrah!) and happily turned my back to get the cap to seal it up when I heard a faint "Blood!" from the patient behind me.  I turned around to find a scene out of The Predator.  The cannula being in vein correctly meant that the blood was free to leave it...and because muggins over here had forgotten to undo the tourniquet the blood was under pressure.  Needless to say I had to spend some time cleaning his arm and wiping some blood off of the floor. Delightful.


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