Round 1

I'm feeling a bit beaten down by the wards. Which explains why I just impulsed bought the world's most expensive pint of ice cream. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Hey. At least I stopped there and showed some restraint against the $7.99 bag of potato chips.

It was busy. And hectic. And nearly impossible to get anything done in a timely manner while being pulled in 15 directions. And then there are the trivial frustrations, like not having log ins to access some of the clinical information, not knowing any phone numbers in the hospital (and apparently no one around here wants to put a call back number in their text pages, which seems like critical info to me), not having badge access to some of the areas on the wards like the med room where they keep each patient's med list.

3 new admits today: 23 year old suicidal man, 15 year old boy with orbital cellulitis, 83 year old woman with hyponatremia (low sodium), UTI, and anemia (with known GI bleed from an admission a few months ago but refused to be scoped at that time). Saw 1 patient in OB triage but sent her home (she will soon return in active labor, no doubt), took about 25 phone calls from the health aides, and it seemed like I sent just about everyone in on a plane to Bethel (translation: more admits for me in the morning). I kept feeling like maybe I was overreacting and should try to manage the patient in the village. But the calls just kept being scary (1 month old with 104 fever, 30 year old with huge, red, painful, swollen testicle, 10 year old with fever, vomiting, severe abdominal pain, 7 year old with hot, red, swollen knee...). And then there were the 10 patients actually in house on my service to deal with.

The other FP on wards commented that he thought I must be very efficient to get 3 admits done in the midst of the chaos. I failed to verbalize the panicky thought that crossed my mind after he said that, namely, that I might simply just be doing a very shoddy job. This whole attending thing/lack of supervisor thing takes a little getting used to. I miss my crutches.

But tomorrow is a new day. Ben reminded me via video chat this evening that I had these same frustrations and fears after day 1 at Swedish and day 1 in Kenya (What? I have no recollection of that whatsoever). Ok, so he's right. It'll get better. And there is always hope that the night float doctor will sort out the madness before I return for round two. I feel a little beaten up but I'm not down for the count just yet.