When It Works

One of the neat things about my job is when you get a patient in and they are in distress and you do "your thing" and they get better. Twice this weekend I got to do it. Got a lady who was going to get bronched and when they hooked her up to the monitors she was in uncontrolled atrial fib. For you non medical folks, this wouldn't always be bad, but her heart rate was 150 and this was new (this is one of the things that can cause those nasty blood clots you hear about). I tossed her in the bed (okay, placed nicely), called the doc, and started her amiodarone bolus. It was so cool, she converted with the bolus, I placed her on the drip and then discovered SHE'S A GROUCH!!! Oh well, it worked.

The next day my patient that was on cardizem already went into uncontrolled a-fib, same thing, only he didn't respond so nicely. He dropped his pressure, got diaphoretic, looked like crap and stuff like that. The fun part was, I had to think, do, and call the doc. Actually he had also developed chest pain but we had to figure out was it cardiac or was it from the surgery he had (we suspect now that he was developing pluersy). I did my thing, the family was all worried, but at the end when we were all better they were so happy with us. I never got "scared" I knew what to do, and it was all good. Some days I don't know what to do, it's just nice when I actually do know. The goal is to get where I know more and can respond faster.

I'm so far from where I want to be in my knowledge base, but I'm excited because I see improvement. When I work with these new grads and they think I'm so smart, I tell them that I'm not, I've just seen some of this before. I still think if my boss knew how dumb I really am, she would ditch me. But four years ago I was new, in four more years I'll think about how little I know now. Learning and growing......