8.17.2009

less aweful reading

b-9

Radgirl's path was benign!!! Best of luck with recovery

8.08.2009

And now for some aweful reading...

One of my more faithful readers Radioactive Girl was just diagnosed with cervical cancer following her recent surgery and had the courage to write about her surgery on her blog.

My heart goes out to her and her family. Please send her your positive vibes as she's waiting for the path results. I can't even begin to imagine the horribleness of having to wait for these things.

Some good reading lately

Since I've been taking a little bit of a break from writing, I've had some more time to keep up with my blog reading list between my shifts and studying to get up to speed. Here are some of the highlights:

White Coat's Trial- this has been a phenomenal series to follow. It highlights some of WC's thoughts going through the trial, the process of being sued as a physician and how malpractice attorneys exploit documentation to build their case. Very insightful!

Ed Leap has a great post about why EM is hard written in his wonderfully insightful manner

The Central Line is the new ACEP blog tackling all sorts of EM-related issues from policy to practice. Grahm from Over!My!Med!Body! is one of the contributing authors with guest posts from Shadowfax.

The ever-cantankerous Panda Bear has been back with some good stuff over on his blog.

ABB is starting to make her transition from the world or EM nursing to Medical School at the RCSI...I'll bet she'll have some good stuff about her transition. One of the best recent posts was about running a code on a neonate and the aftermath.

Finally, the fake doctor is back from his year long hiatus and has a new Healtcare policy blog that he's using to explore the new US health care quagmire. White Coat and The Central Line also have alot of policy content these days...each with a slightly different angle.

8.07.2009

Back where I belong

For the past month I've been the Bostonian in Boston. My natural habitat!!! I've been hanging out in some of the Hub's better emergency departments and I'll be spending August in another cool Boston-area program. I can't tell you how nice it has been work in the field that I want to match into in the city I want to live in. I finally feel like the past 3 years of pain and suffering are coming to an end and that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I feel like I can finally be what I want to be and do what I want to do. Best of all, I leave my shifts exhausted and happy, which hasn't happened very often in medical school.

One thing that is nice about doing an emergency medicine clerkship is that you have freedom to see the patient, evaluate them and put your own plan into action with the approval of the attending. Something that I hadn't really appreciated until these rotations are how awesome ED nurses are. At the first program that I worked at, the nurses and physicians had an amazing collaborative relationship...no one was above anyone else and everyone worked hard to "move the meat".

One of the murses (yes...murse) adopted me during one of my first shifts and made sure that I knew where everything was. He'd save procedures for me, grease the wheels to make me look good, (knew what tests were going to be sent before I asked for them and usually what meds should be hanging)...and would gently remind me if I forgot something in the orders. Absolutely stellar (!), as were most of the other nurses. It was probably one of my favorite settings to work in...ever!

In the new department that I've started in, there's a physical divide between the physicians and everyone else. The department, designed by a trauma surgeon, is divided into two pods. Each pod has a large rectangular nurses station in the center surrounding an enclosed physician's charting area, a med room and a nutrition center. This doesn't lend itself to the most collaborative environment, and as such it's not easy to keep track of who has who. Fortunately, I'm pretty low-key and have managed to get along with most of the nurses pretty well without them rolling their eyes or yelling at me...so that makes me feel good.

Anyway, I've had alot of shifts and a good amount of reading to keep up on amongst living at home with the parents and siblings wanting to hang out in my free time...so the blogging will be thin this month, but I'm sure that I'll have some more stories to share...