Archive for July, 2005
First Pediatrics Patient
July 10th, 2005Today marked the first time I was truly “saw” a patient. It was the second day of my peds clerkship, but my first day actually in the clinic. The six of us went to the well-baby clinic knowing we’d see patients, but we didn’t expect to see them so soon and without some sort of hand-holding or warm-up. The attending physician came in, told us to take a history and physical, and then said to go.
She walked out for a minute, and when no one said anything I thought everyone else was comfortable with what we were to do…but the moment someone said a word, everyone quickly admitted how unconfident and freaked out they felt.
Luckily we were paired up, which made me feel better initially, but that just meant there’d be two people in the room who had no idea what to do. We walked in, with a translator (since the patient only spoke Spanish), and went about interviewing the mother for half an hour about her 3-year-old’s simple little cough.
That wasn’t bad. Our physical exam, however, was pathetic.
We started by taking vital signs, which sounds easy, but trying to get the pulse of a squirmy kid is pretty hard. But not nearly as hard as trying to determine his breathing rate since his tiny chest didn’t move with each breath. Then, in my greatest show of clumsiness, I stumbled around trying to fit the huge adult BP cuff around his arm, when the translator started laughing. She finally admitted that all the vitals were already taken by the nurses.
Strumbling through several other parts of the physical, we reached the genital exam. We pulled down the kid’s diapers and then froze…we stood and looked each other in silence until we both said, aloud, “what do we do now?” Neither of us knew, so after some more uncomfortable silence we turned to the translator and asked her what to do! She then gave us some general suggestions on what to do. I don’t think we could have been more imcompetent…
Thankfully the mother didn’t speak english and couldn’t understand what we were saying to each other. In the end, when we went back in the room with our attending (who re-performed everything, but smoothly), we realized we didn’t miss all that much. But none of that erases this clumsy, uncomfortable, and memorable first experience of ours. I’d like to say that it can’t get any worse, but I’m sure it can.
New coral
July 11th, 2005 |
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Today I bought 3 green Chromis and also my first SPS coral…a Stylophora. Hopefully he’ll get sufficient light and not die on me. It’d be a shame to have a $65 coral not last long.