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Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Dilemmas Of A Resident Doctor

1. You are facing your first job interview. You are asked whether you have intubated a patient solely. You mutter and fumble and succeed in arousing a lot of doubts in the interviewer’s mind.

2. It’s your 4th day of posting in Accident & Emergency Department. You are virtually surrounded by a flurry of patients with near similar presenting complaints with near equal anxiety. You gallantly finished the test by scribbling at every patient’s prescription slip, only to realize that for 2 patients you prescribed Inj Perinorm instead of Inj Stemetil. Now what? You gushing like maniacs to find the piece of literature (available with every medicine) with fine prints to evaluate to possibility of potential side-effects. Life in the fast lane with blinding beams.

3. You did not bother to examine the patient completely and the senior consultant appears from nowhere. You are asked about abdominal findings and you get only 2 abbreviations in your mind; NAD (No abnormality detected) & WNL (Within normal limits). You follow your mind; only to be taught the basics of abdominal palpation with an annoyance. After all, it was no body’s fault that patient’s spleen was massively enlarged with beautifully palpable anterior margin.

4. You are in the middle of the night with virtually no patients to attend on emergency basis. You feel nauseating with the combined effects of nicotine with drawl, hunger pangs and drowsy eyes.

5. You are explaining the consent for surgery and anesthesia to a patient; and this guy is serious. The moment you tell him the rare possibility of dreaded complications (including but not limited to death), he appears shocked and betrayed. And in a knee-jerk reaction, he orders you to arrange a meeting with the senior doctor, so that he can re-decide whether he wants to be anesthetized and operated upon or not. Now who will call the senior consultant; and what sort of explanation can save the resident doctor’s already compromised authority?

6. You feel thrilled to have a sight of a beautiful intern in the ward. You steal glances while organizing your hair with an electric vigor, only to gather in coming minutes that she is blissfully married and preparing for USMLE to settle with her in-laws in Philadelphia. Life is a crap!

7. You are assisting in OPD of your Unit Head. You are told to write ATT (Anti-tubercular Medications) to a patient, you gladly wrote AKT-4 Kit, to be taken once a day. But your Unit Head seems unhappy, he asks to write individual drugs with their dosages and your pen virtually slips with the flood of sweat between your index finger and ring finger. What if he asks about individual complications of each anti tubercular medication? What is the full form of DOTS?

8. Its post midnight. You are in duty room. You get a call regarding refractory febrile spike of a child. You collect yourself to attend him. You get another call about the routine blood sugar (RBS) value of 24 of another patient; you shout on the phone for 25%D infusion. Another call for a patient (Post Operative Day 1 of Hemicolectomy) complaining of severe abdominal pain and increasing distension. Another call from Emergency ward to attend a family (which just arrived in dehydrated and lethargic condition in the hospital) suspected to be having food poisoning. Another call for repeated failed attempts of peripheral canulation of a 5 day old infant. Oh God!!! Why ME?

9. You were set to cool your heels this Saturday evening with your girlfriend in the swanky interior of PVR Saket. In the late morning of Saturday, you are told by ever arrogant Roster Incharge that your shift has been revised and you are supposed to do a 24 hours duty starting this evening. What lies in a Sabbath?

10. You observe with great wisdom that your Unit Head is not able to make a diagnosis; you scratch your brain and the missing piece pops up with a flash. You tell your opinion with puffed torso and somber voice, only to finds its utter triviality in milliseconds. Is there any software for erasing recently acquired memory? If it is there, I would like to apply it to my Unit Head to save my already negotiated self-pride.

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