Parcho, MD » exploits http://parchomd.com The musings of a Southern-trained physician and his wife... Sun, 22 Aug 2010 19:17:44 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 The First Call http://parchomd.com/2007/08/06/the-first-call-2/ http://parchomd.com/2007/08/06/the-first-call-2/#comments Tue, 07 Aug 2007 01:31:58 +0000 Parcho http://parchomd.com/2007/08/06/the-first-call-2/ 800px-pager_teletrimWe capped with 10 team admissions a little after midnight–so it was a busy admission afternoon/evening and not so much a busy early morning for admissions. I admitted three patients and a fourth went straight to the ICU which counted towards our cap meaning little to no work on our part. The other intern admitted four patients and our fourth year “acting intern” admitted two. The upper level resident supervises all the admissions so we can say he admitted 10.

There were three code pages throughout the day, but two were canceled quickly because the MICU doesn’t like to announce codes–they deal with them internally. The final code came at about 4:30 AM–from Radiology. Oops. When I got there it was merely a respiratory code. The patient was tubed and shipped back up to the floor.

But the main problem with call is the “cross cover”. I fielded phone calls all day and night on patient’s I’d never met. I ordered some Phenergan. I gave a patient a bit of morphine. I sent off a couple of blood cultures. I even wrote a work excuse for a patient’s husband.

In all I worked 29 hours and slept a mere 2 of those.

Welcome to residency.

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