6-1, week 3

Well, this was my third week of simulated patients, working in the ED and just getting through life knowing as positively little as possible.

my mom called today to say i should be complaining about having days off... Honestly, I need that time to clear my head and think about what has happened in the past few days... Sometimes, being in the ED can overwhelm you until you learn to dissociate from it.

I've woken up by 5 am every day this week, and Monday and Tuesday & Thursday I had to be in the ER by 6 am. by 6:20am we'd pronounced someone dead. Nothing starts off your day quite like that. I am reminded of House of God's rules... They can always hurt you more, and the patient is the one with the disease. Also I recently read Match Day, and the rules were "patients will die, and doctors can't stop it" None of this really helps when it lingers over you all day though.

It was sort of a depressing week if I had to look back at it. Several codes a day... "where' sthe best place to collapse if ur going to code?" "On television" they always get them back there... in reality, thats not the case when its real life. People usually don't make it.

My simulated patient this week was a gunshot victim. I didn't roll him fast enough to see his back where he was shot again,a nd I didn't put the neck collar on fast enough so he was paralyzed anyway. I guess thats why I'm training... so I don't make these mistakes on real patients some day.

I did get a central line this week, I'd never seen a femoral line done, let alone do one, and I got one on the second code we did. Didn't matter though, she didn't make it, but I got it in really fast, and I was really confident after that. I needed that after having so much issue with intubating this week. I was really good at it when I did my anesthesia rotation, but now that its in the ER and there are patients needing me to do it, an dthe patients are much larger than in surgery, I guess i'm struggling more than I anticipated. I'll survive, its just frustrating.

we were given the videos of our performances in the simlabs... I'm afraid to watch mine to be honest. I know I'm doing not well enough, and I wish theyd give us the upperlevels to compare. I would have liked to see how they did comparably. I could get some tips that way lol

Residency isn't always glamour and happiness... sometimes its seeing lives being shattered apart and you are standing there covered in the patients blood but for all your efforts you couldn't change a thing... and accepting that it isn't really failing, you got through everything the way it was supposed to be done, in really good time, its just reality... fate... destiny... whatever you want to call it... and it can be a bummer!