Saturday, October 22, 2011

Today's routine

Today I was so tired.  By the end of my working week the sleep debt has accumulated so much I feel like I've done an all-nighter... I tried to fix it by going to bed at 6.30pm last night as soon as I got home from work - but I could only sleep for an hour before my body said "Hey, I'm normally woken by a loud beeping noise at this time so I'm just going to go ahead a wake-up now anyway".

I got up and watched Paramedics: Recruits from the night before which was 20 minutes with fast-forwarding the ads.  I was happy to see this week they showed a patient that vomitted all over himself and the ambulance as that is what the job is really like.  I have become good at pre-empting emesis with my four years on-road experience (plus 3 years ambulance training and 7 years army medic experience).  I was watching the tv thinking "He's gonna spew!  Get an em-bag!", but, no, they were insistently trying to put a Hudson's (oxygen) mask on him.  They nearly wore it too.

All I wanted to do was watch tv last night. Instead I got to finish the physiology Kaplan videos for all of endocrine, which is excellent.

Today at work I watched the whole pathology section for endocrine as well.  I have now completed the videos for endocrine in the first week of the term (except for pharm because its thyroid section is so small - I will watch it at the end of the term for revision of the other endocrine drugs)!  Excellent!  The videos took me about 1.5 hours today.

Retention of videos - probably about 75%, which isn't bad considering they are designed for revision.  For me, I found them handy as an introduction to the topic.  I think watching them again as revision would be better.  The biochemistry I watched the other day is probably my weakest area (as usual) but I think I could do well there if I spent more time on it.  I think being in the MD program now this is something I'll certainly have to look at.

We went out on jobs for most of the day, and I managed to scrape in the endocrine section of FA over about 20 minutes.  I took my Guyton and Hall in the ambulance with me, but my partner finished his paperwork too quick and was done before I had refurbished the ambulance.

At work I'm always looking up anything I don't know, especially patients medications, and revising things like diagnosing left and right bundle-branch blocks, and when I return to the ED cubicle with my finished paperwork, often the doctor has ordered his initial tests and management and I can check what they are.  At triage I'm on my phone Googling everything while I wait that 5 minutes.

Tonight I have to prepare for tomorrow's lecture.  I have to make sure I've done those compulsory readings, which is a massive task.  It will take me all night, and that's if I don't get any call-outs.  It's also my baby-sitter's 18th tonight so I promised I'd drop in if I could.

That is where I'm up to.

In other news, my dog hates thunder and I felt so sorry for him today as we were stuck at the hospital and it was a big storm. He got into the rubbish bin yesterday, but it was my fault as I left chicken bones in there andI guess the smell was just too irresistible. He once did that when I first got him last year but he got the bin lid stuck on his head.  Enough time has passed now and he has regained his courage towards the bin.  I must remember to put such smelly-delights straight out into the big bin in the garage where he can't get to it.

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