Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Staffing friends

Today I staffed 2 rooms with residents in it. Basically that means being in charge of what happens in both rooms. Also that means I need to try to teach residents. It means that I need to watch them perform procedures that are sometimes tricky. It's very stressful watching someone do something you could do yourself.

Also it it means staffing friends. I've become friends with a lot of the residents because we were in the same program before I was an attending, and we've remained friends. I try to be laid back about the whole process. This morning we bring the patient back into the room after the resident puts in an arterial line and thoracic epidural in the pre-op area. I look at the top of his cart. Now there's supposed to be a bunch of medications available for me to help put the patient asleep. And in addition there's supposed to be some emergency drugs there 'just in case' something happens. I look and there's a couple of syringes of paralytic sitting there. Nothing there to put the patient asleep, nothing to use in case of emergency. He turns and says he forgot the induction agent so we send our medical student running to the pharmacy while we put the patient on monitors. I didn't want to make a big deal of everything so I draw up some emergency drugs while he's fiddling with things. The student comes back and we put the patient asleep. We're getting things worked out and just comment to him that even though we're friends we need to be a little more prepared to do these cases. He gives me a funny look and chuckles. He points to his pocket and the emergency drugs are there ready to go. He says he was wondering why I drew up the other stuff. Ha ha.. now don't I look silly. SO STRESSFUL... people need to tell me things

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lot of good the emergency drugs would do in his pocket if his hands were otherwise occupied and he needed someone else to administer them.

bnug said...

At least he had them.