Respiratory Ward

I just remembered some silly things which I did whilst attached to the respiratory ward.
Was looking at an X-ray of the patient with Ade the FY2, and it showed a large consolidation, and both of us were wondering why she had deteriorated so fast whereas the patient still looks quite well. Then finally Ade realised that we were both looking at the wrong chest x-ray of another patient. hahahaha. Lesson learned is one should check the name before looking at a chest x-ray.

Another time was when one of the FY1 asked me to take bloods from one of the patients. So I went in and took bloods from the patient and stuck a label onto it and sent it off in the tubes. Later on in the afternoon, the results came back and the FY1 was writing down the blood results into the folder. Then the patient who was supposed to be well, suddenly had deranged blood results coming in, and we finally figured it out that I had took bloods from the correct patients and had stuck the wrong labels on it as there were two patients with the same name in the ward and I had totally forgotten, and just look through the folders and had pick up the labels without checking properly that it was the other patient. haha sounds confusing eh?

I miss the FY1s in the respiratory ward, Ryan, Elizabeth and Andrew, they are soo nice :) I followed them to x-ray meetings, and Friday teachings and Thursday FY1 teaching with them. Speaking of X-ray meetings, the meetings in Inverness are really good, definitely worth attending. The radiologist explains quite thoroughly all the things you can see on x-ray and the other doctors bring quite an interesting array of different x-rays for show.

Oh yeah, thanks to Andrew in the respiratory ward for teaching me how to take arterial blood gases. Took so many of them in one day. Did my first ABG, and I couldn't get it when I first inserted the needle in, and he told me to slowly move the needle up and down and try to locate the location of the artery, was ecstatic when the needle finally started to fill up with ruby red blood :)

Anyway my heart is too weak, can't stand pricking and poking around with the needle looking for the artery when the patient is in so much pain. I feel so cruel for being the bringer of pain. I can feel the tension and the stench of sour sweat of the patient drifting to my nose as I palpate the wrist to locate the radial artery whereby I then proceed to thrust the sharp needle into the wrist hoping that I managed to get the correct location and wait whilst the blood is slowly sucked up into the syringe.

okay enough of that. I have turned into a vampire, keep taking bloods from all the patients. I am better at taking venous blood compared to taking arterial blood. The patients are so nice! When I managed to get their blood, they usually go like "good job". And there was this once when I had to insert a cannulae into a patient, and I actually forgot to release the tourniquet cause it was covered by the sleeves of his shirt, and blood was pouring out from the tip where I had to insert a top to cover it, and I had to clean everything up. But I did manage to get the cannulae in with no problem. But strangely in the end he was thanking me profusely, and once when I was walking outside and saw him smoking outside, he still remembered me and said thanks to me.