I spent Monday shadowing two paramedics with one of the local EMS companies. The morning was boring because there were absolutely no calls, which I suppose from the viewpoint of society is a good thing - no one in the area had any pressing medical crises that morning. However, it wasn't much fun sitting around and waiting, even though the crew gave me a fairly extensive tour of their ambulance and the rest of the equipment.
We finally got a call in the early afternoon. We drove out to a fairly rural house and found a 77-year old woman unconscious on the bathroom floor. Her husband said that she was diabetic and had been unresponsive for a few minutes before he called 911. The paramedic measured her blood sugar and it was somewhere around 30 mg/dL, so he gave her glucose and started a saline drip. After a few minutes her pulse ox stats improved and she seemed alert, though she was not talking so the paramedics quickly strapped her to a backboard, carried her to the stretcher waiting on the front porch, and wheeled her into the ambulance. We took off for the hospital, sirens blaring. The patient's glucose readings improved over the course of the drive, though she was still not talking, which was worrisome. When we wheeled her into the ER, the nurses directed us into a trauma room, though there wasn't as much action as I'd hoped there would be. No docs showed up, at any rate. We left after delivering the nurses her latest stats, and so I don't know what happened after that.
The second call was for another elderly woman, this time needed transport to the hospital because of her "flu-like" symptoms. This lady didn't appear to be in terrible shape to me; she was talking (whining, actually) the entire drive and though she complained of hip and joint pain, her son didn't seem particularly concerned as we wheeled her stretcher into the ambulance. I got the feeling that he had been through that routine multiple times prior.
As we were driving back to base from that call, we stopped at the county 911 call center. The building itself looks somewhat dilapidated from the outside and it's not in the greatest of neighborhoods, but all the equipment inside is state-of-the-art. It was rather impressive.
On the road after the 911 call center, we got a call for a 44-year old woman with a "severe" nosebleed. I got excited; finally, something bloody and gross! I was rather disappointed when we arrived at the scene. The woman's nosebleed had stopped on its own, though she was clearly freaked out by the amount of blood that had soaked her towels. In reality, I don't think it was all that much, but when she told us that she had undergone surgery two weeks ago to place a stent in her artery, the paramedics decided to be cautious and took her to the hospital. The ER staff were clearly unimpressed with this patient; she didn't even get trauma room.
On the whole, it wasn't a completely worthless day, though I do wish I had seen something a bit more interesting. Oh, well. Maybe my day with the helicopter flight team in a few weeks will me more exciting.
Today I spent the morning in the dialysis center with the charge nurse and a nursing student. It was boring, since I'd already been up there once before. Naturally I put on a smile and entertained the usual litany of questions from the nurses and patients ("Oh, you're going to be a doctor?!"), but I decided I didn't want to spend the entire day watching patients sit around and have their blood cleaned, so I made my excuses and took off at lunchtime.
I will say that I am getting a little tired of:
1) People asking what sort of physician I want to be, and
2) Creepy middle-aged men hitting on me.
Seriously, can't I be left alone to observe in peace? Why does every male over the age of twelve have to be obnoxious? I don't usually mind if it's coming from an elderly, grandparent-like patient, but it can get really uncomfortable when the guy is younger and makes a comment which may not immediately appear inappropriate. Ugh. Disgusting.
No comments:
Post a Comment