In the meantime!

While waiting for the call that will change me from a job seeker to a candidate and finally an employee I have spent the last few weeks with a great career coach from my school going over my resume, cover letters and just this week practicing for the interview.

As a kid, I remember while on holidays with my grandparents being grilled for interviews by my grandma and grandad who acted as the screening committee. Myself, my twin and cousin would be grilled on the words of the second stanza of the Nigerian National anthem which perhaps contributed to my knowing all the words till date, reasons why we want to attend this school and not some obscure school, favorite books, hobbies etc, its amazing that more than twenty years later interviews are still very much made up the same stuff.

While practicing interview techniques with my schools career coach she asked several questions which brought a million memories back, I also watched the first episode of Boston Med which also made me take that trip down memory lane.

Several months ago, okay two years ago I worked in a trauma center in Port Harcourt which was then a hotbed of militant activities. The center is located in Mile one and for anyone who knows PH that is certainly not a great place to work. We worked 12 hour shifts daily with a few days off each week and I can tell you it was pretty gruesome stuff. We never came to work dressed up like doctors (the TV series Greys anatomy, ER etc shows docs in white coats) there was no need to. You would probably be splattered with blood or have your gucci trousers soaked in POP (yeah we still used that there cheaper than the fancy synthetic stuff) We wore aprons instead of ward coats, easier to clean saved a lot of trouble and we could leave the aprons in the hospital instead of carrying soiled ward coats home with us.

Anyway this story forms the basis of the interview question- What is one of the most challenging situations you have found yourself in and how did you handle it? I was on duty this lovely night praying that it would be peaceful and I could spend some time sitting down instead of standing up. My prayer was answered for the first few hours of the call but after that all hell broke loose. We received a bus load of patients whose bus had been hit by a trailer. In a few minutes all our beds were occupied. This was a full scale emergency for we had at least 2 persons with hip dislocations, several fractures of the limbs (open and closed), head injuries, lacerations etc. It was a mad house. I was the only doctor on call!

Luckily the weeks prior had been spent preparing everybody for a full scale emergency and I happened to have on duty with me that night not just in the emergency room but on the wards many terrific nurses,nurse aides, stretcher bearers and the greatest radiographer in the world (at that point in time) who not only shot great films but was quick! I owe to them all a successful outing. Note that our most advanced equipmement were pulse oximeters and of course the human beings working in the hospital.

Very quickly we went to work, the nurse aides went around identifying and labelling the patients who had not only filled the ER but were laid on sheets of tarpaulin on the floor beyond the ER in a section which we used as a waiting area and could be converted to an overflow. I swiftly went around dividing the patients based on the severity of their injuries examining them, sending the stable patients to the x ray room and quickly called for back up, two surgeons came and disappeared into the theater to reduce one of the hip dislocations. Just as they started we received a phone call from the police saying that some fighting had broken out in some district and they were bringing victims who most likely had gun shot wounds and would require surgery. I was glad that the fighting was not near us, a few months before the staff on duty at night dove for cover when they realized that there was shooting going on all around them. When they emerged from their hiding places (under the patients bed:) they discovered a bullet hole in the ceiling! It became the central point for inducing fear into new colleagues!

I put a call to the theater to inform the surgeons that they would most likely have another case soon and they did. We had two patients who had been shot, one in the abdomen who needed an exploratory laparotomy, up to the blood bank I went after receiving samples collected for me by the nurses to group and cross match the blood, he was prepared for theater and sent off. Then round and round I went in circles, examining, splinting, washing and binding wounds, suturing lacerations, giving orders, receiving feedback. It was like we were on a battle field only this time in the ER. I remember only the first and last patients that night, the first patient I attended to had a hip dislocation and was taken into theater after the other patient with the same diagnosis, we became friends because he was on the ward I was in charge of for 6 weeks on traction and I saw him everyday.

The last patient was a nightmare, from the minute he stepped in he was shouting and screaming that he was going to die. When I examined him he only had about 2 scalp lacerations which the nurses put a firm dressing over to stop the bleeding and I left to deal with other life threatening complications and came back to suture at the very end. At the end of the day we probably saw over 25 patients that night.
When everything calmed down it took me sometime to write up the notes and of course thank everyone who had come in to help from other words. Our work that night became the stuff fables are made of. It became one of the highlights of my time there. It was great to work with a team who knew exactly needed to be done and even though it was tough I would not mind doing it all over again!