Ok, so I started back in the Emergency Department at a new hospital, Suburban, which is in... wait for it... the suburbs of Buffalo. It's interesting because it sees a large volume of patients, but the, dare I say, class of patients we see is much different than at the other hospitals. Also, things work much more like a private community hospital in that we don't have a bajillion specialists and primary physicians to try to sort through when admitting a patient. Also, the nurses don't seem as sullen, fancy that...!
So, I was scoring about 80% in the admission department last night. Considering I saw about 10 patients, that's kind of high, but most of my patients weren't able to be sent home. They actually had real medical problems that they were, for the most part, too fiesty in attitude to complain about and it was only now that they were really sick that they decided to come in.
Also, although the waiting room was full when I came in, there didn't seem to be that fast paced pressure to "move the meat." Now, don't get me wrong, we did see and dispo patients expeditiously, but it just seemed I was more able to spend time talking to my patients and learning more about them than their presenting symptoms.
So they included:
- the "cougarette" on her second relationship now pregnant who came in concerned for some bleeding. Baby looked good, things looked good, she's the one that got to go home. And, I actually realized that OB did me some good in that vag exams, not so bad. Not that I want to do them EVERY day, but still, it was more tolerable.
- the newspaper man who's been having chest pain for a while, didn't want to come in because he has a sick wife at home and was more concerned about her. Now he's in the chest pain center and will have a stress test and some other tests since he hasn't been to see a doctor in a while. Admitted.
- the "ate some bad figs" stayed in the department for several hours until her tummy felt better. She was my other discharge last night.
- also saw some shortness of breath with high troponins, liver failure that was passed off in sign-out, recurrent abdominal pain, etc.
Have to run, another night shift tonight... we'll see what comes in!
