A Night at work!
Due to my good luck at working in a hospital where my boss took all the calls at night seeing he lived in the compound it has been over a year since I worked at night. Yesterday was my third night call in over a year and unlike my first two calls this one was far from calm.I walked to the hospital after a harrowing journey from my house. I had never gone by public transport so late at night, and while walking from the last busstop to the hospital I was convinced my big bag and I were a beautiful target of potential muggers whose images I saw in everone that passed by me.Thankfully I got in safely.
I was handed over a relatively calm hospital, there were no patients waiting to be seen or reviewed in the emergency room. There was only one man who had a major operation earlier in the day in the Intensive care unit that I had to keep an eye on. The peace was shattered by the arrival of four casualties all at once. They had been passengers in the same care whose tyre had burst in motion. They all seemed okay but after examining them, two of them had major injuries that neccesitated the transfer of one of them to the nearby teaching hospital. Treating them was not a problem but their relations did not make our job easy. After explaining why MR X needed to be transferred right away, they kept on asking us how we expected them to transport the rest of the crew who did not have any major injuries home if they were to take MR X to the teaching hospital.After repeatedly explaining to them why he needed to be transferred immediately I gave up on them to attend to the next patient who had just come in. Eventually they took him away.
The next patient was a young hunter who had gone to the bush to hunt and was shot at by another hunter. The gun shot woundswere made by pellets which were superficial and should not have caused much damage. The problem was that he had first gone to a traditional home where he had been for 4days. Only God knows what was done to him, as by the time he came in we could smell his gangrenous leg while he was outside the gates. The gangrene was from his toes to just above his knee so he needed an above knee amputation.
In between preparing him for theatre one saw a varied number of cases. When I finally thought I could drop off to sleep, an urgent call from theatre came I needed to group and crossmatch blood for the patient who was having the amputation, less than an hour after that when I had succesfully nodded off, the nurses in the recovery room banged on my door, I needed to come and see the young man urgently he was not breathing? Thankfully by the time I got there he had resumed spontaneous respiration.
I finally got to bed about 3:30am and woke up at 5am when my alarm rang( I had forgotten to turn it off). I finally got home at about 8:30am and slept till 1pm. I have today off so I can sit at this computer and blog about my night at work!
I was handed over a relatively calm hospital, there were no patients waiting to be seen or reviewed in the emergency room. There was only one man who had a major operation earlier in the day in the Intensive care unit that I had to keep an eye on. The peace was shattered by the arrival of four casualties all at once. They had been passengers in the same care whose tyre had burst in motion. They all seemed okay but after examining them, two of them had major injuries that neccesitated the transfer of one of them to the nearby teaching hospital. Treating them was not a problem but their relations did not make our job easy. After explaining why MR X needed to be transferred right away, they kept on asking us how we expected them to transport the rest of the crew who did not have any major injuries home if they were to take MR X to the teaching hospital.After repeatedly explaining to them why he needed to be transferred immediately I gave up on them to attend to the next patient who had just come in. Eventually they took him away.
The next patient was a young hunter who had gone to the bush to hunt and was shot at by another hunter. The gun shot woundswere made by pellets which were superficial and should not have caused much damage. The problem was that he had first gone to a traditional home where he had been for 4days. Only God knows what was done to him, as by the time he came in we could smell his gangrenous leg while he was outside the gates. The gangrene was from his toes to just above his knee so he needed an above knee amputation.
In between preparing him for theatre one saw a varied number of cases. When I finally thought I could drop off to sleep, an urgent call from theatre came I needed to group and crossmatch blood for the patient who was having the amputation, less than an hour after that when I had succesfully nodded off, the nurses in the recovery room banged on my door, I needed to come and see the young man urgently he was not breathing? Thankfully by the time I got there he had resumed spontaneous respiration.
I finally got to bed about 3:30am and woke up at 5am when my alarm rang( I had forgotten to turn it off). I finally got home at about 8:30am and slept till 1pm. I have today off so I can sit at this computer and blog about my night at work!
How fun! Sounds like you stay busy on emergency which is the most amazing field of medicine EVER! You never did share your news...I want to hear it. Love you so much Tomi
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