Coffee Jerk: “How was work today, Shazam?” Shazam: “Not as tragic as the past few days. Of course, I left by 5pm today.” . I returned to the unit today to learn that 2 patients had died in my absence, 2 new motor vehicle crash victims had arrived in their place, and the new patient [...]
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I reread Friday’s post, and it seems like forever ago. I’ve just slept for about 12 hours straight after yesterday’s call. Saturday was no better than Friday, but somehow easier to deal with because there was less chaos, fewer cooks in the kitchen and a shared grief by the entire staff for the patient that [...]
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Today just sucked. It was the worst day so far in the ICU. It started out slowly, but then layers of chaos simply built upon one another. And there’s only so long you can shield yourself from the sadness of sick and dying patients around you. Mid morning, I floated down to the west end [...]
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I am still obsessed with my Virtual Birders Field Notebook at www.herodias.org. I have continued to work on my laptop version, but sadly, can’t update the website until I’ve got the bulk of the features added. So far, I think I have locations and outings under control, and now just have to connect the birds [...]
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With about 16 days to go in my 1 year warranty for my Sony Vaio, I was just about to back up the hard drive and send it in for service. The touchpad is unruly and unreliable. I followed the troubleshooting guidelines they sent me last July, and finally just gave up and bought an [...]
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An unfortunate death took place yesterday in our ICU, a young woman with complications from an elective surgical procedure. It was, of course, tragic. It made us all sick to our stomach’s to listen to each morning’s report of the case. Her husband was devastated, naturally. As is usually the case in such circumstances, the [...]
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On the wild assumption that one of you out there has done international medical research, and successfully received an ethics review from the host country (to accompany your home institutions IRB approval), how would you suggest I go about it? Specifically Honduras.
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I had high hopes of enjoying “the easy life” of an upper level resident in the ICU. But it’s not turning out the way I had anticipated. I was looking forward to teaching and supervising interns performing procedures, having time during the day to mull over charts and get to know about patients, spending time [...]
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Surgery fellow, storms into unit at 11pm… Fellow: “How come nobody called me about this? Why would you stop her tube feeds? Why hasn’t she been transferred off of your service.???” Me: “Umm…” Fellow: “Why would you think an esophageal leak would cause problems? Why don’t you know anything about the miniscule surgical subspecialty field [...]
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First day in the ICU. Another fun game of guess what I’m thinking between me and the attending… I began… Me: “Dr. Scott, did you get a chance to look at Mr. Ziek’s numbers?” Him: “I did, did you?” Me: “Yep.” Him: “What did you think of them?” Me: “Well, his pulmonary artery pressures are [...]
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