Hi all
Its 10 weeks until I'm an Foundation Year 2 doctor! I was working on call today on the Acute Medical Unit and it wasn't until the next two events unfold that I realised just how far I'd come!
1. A cardiac arrest call was put out and came through to my bleep/ pager (in my hospital, if you're on call, you're also part of the arrest/ crash team). As usual, I dropped everything and ran to where the arrest was located expecting to arrive to confirmed cardiac arrest and to help out with jobs as per usual. But today was different. I was the first on the scene. There were some porters around the patient but no one clinically trained, besides me! I assessed the patient, confirmed cardiac arrest and commenced CPR. The rest of the team arrived during my assessment and just let me get on - the team includes registrars, senior house officers, senior nursing staff and resus officers. We continued for a short while and the patient ROSC'd (return of spontaneous circulation).
2. A nurse on the ward called me because she was concerned about a patient. She said "it looks like the patient is struggling to breathe doctor, their tongue is swollen!". I went into the room and indeed the patient was stridoring with a swollen tongue. I immediately asked for adrenaline, hydrocortisone and chlorphenamine because the patient was having an anaphylactic reaction to their recently connected IV antibiotics. Within minutes, the patient was breathing better!
I was so so proud of myself. For so long, I had questioned whether I had just been coasting through F1 with not much responsibility. I was especially worried about the fact that I'll be a senior house officer in August and I will have someone (an F1) coming to ME for advice. But today, I was able to put my training into practice. I don't know why today was particularly good because I've had exposure to unwell patients and I have dealt with worser cases than today. But, I just felt really good, and thought it was time to take stock and look back at how far I'd come. I think the cardiac arrest call was especially great because it was the first time I had been "first on scene". I worried about this during medical school and dreaded the day it would happen to me because I thought I would forget everything, but actually, everything just came to me! I remembered all I needed to do and I did it. And people trusted my decision and my assessment, including the registrar! Wow, haha!
And the anaphylaxis. Again, I had never seen someone's tongue swollen like that. But I was glad that I identified the problems and I treated it before we had a bigger issue on our hands.
Its funny. The time has gone by so so quickly. It feels like only yesterday I was introducing myself to a room of consultants as a FI on the Emergency Surgery firm. How time has zoomed past and how confident I now feel as a doctor.
Even minor things like doing blood gases or lumbar punctures, things I used to get extremely anxious about are now just things I do - my heart rate doesn't even change!
There is no clear transition from feeling out of your depth to feeling somewhat confident but when it happens its feels awesome! Hopefully I get more and more chances like today to feel a tiny bit more competent as a doctor!
Ahhh, I got the feels, and roll on FY2!
Laters!
Written by Sam Forde
