I experienced my first shift in the ED on Thursday. At first I was just so anxious that I stood around trying to act calm and collected. This means I tried to hide in a corner and not be in the way, but really I bumped into about 2 physicians, 3 nurses and knocked over an entire large diet coke. It spilled every where. My face has not turned this shade of red in a long time.
My first patient was a lady with a headache. At first I thought she was a drug seeker, but after doing an MRA of her brain we found an aneurysm! I felt like I saved a life, but truthfully, we didn't do anything except admit her for pain control.
It was my second patient that made my pulses rise and really got me excited for Emergency Medicine. It was a 25 year old man who works as a carpenter. He had shot a nail gun in which the nail ricocheted off a knot in the wood and went through-and-through his ring finger on his left hand. He and I were both lucky that it did not go through the bone---he was lucky because it meant no surgery,while I was lucky because it meant I got to pull it out. I did a digital nerve block on his ring finger, held down the finger while the attending held the wrist and I did a 1,2,3 PULL!! I gave it tiny tug at first to see how hard it was going to be, realized it was really stuck and pulled with all my might! It came out with a gush of blood and I couldn't hide the smile off my face. What a rush.
My first patient was a lady with a headache. At first I thought she was a drug seeker, but after doing an MRA of her brain we found an aneurysm! I felt like I saved a life, but truthfully, we didn't do anything except admit her for pain control.
It was my second patient that made my pulses rise and really got me excited for Emergency Medicine. It was a 25 year old man who works as a carpenter. He had shot a nail gun in which the nail ricocheted off a knot in the wood and went through-and-through his ring finger on his left hand. He and I were both lucky that it did not go through the bone---he was lucky because it meant no surgery,while I was lucky because it meant I got to pull it out. I did a digital nerve block on his ring finger, held down the finger while the attending held the wrist and I did a 1,2,3 PULL!! I gave it tiny tug at first to see how hard it was going to be, realized it was really stuck and pulled with all my might! It came out with a gush of blood and I couldn't hide the smile off my face. What a rush.
1 comment:
This same thing happened to me... no, I didn't pull a nail out of someone's finger... someone did from mine though! The story is almost exactly the same. Mine was the middle finger like in the photo, but mine was just distal to the DIP joint. I got lucky too, if you can call a defective gun ONLY hitting flesh lucky. :)
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