We started our clinicals back up at the hospital this week, and that went very well. I went in there so nervous yesterday morning, but that eased up as the morning went on. I passed meds, observed PT changing the dressing of my patient's stage 4 pressure ulcer of the heel, charted, and other fun things.
We were then excused to go to a medical ethics meeting. The initial subject was preparation for H1N1 and patient surge. Ethics comes into this say, when you have two patients needing a ventilator--in the instance that things get that bad--and one has a 50/50 chance of survival, is mid-forties and has a family, the other patient is 75/25 with no one and just so happens to be 75 years old. Who gets the last available ventilator?
Then the other issue raised came from a recent case where a woman at 24 weeks came in wanting a therapeutic abortion because of fetal anomalies, where the fetus would be non-viable upon birth. This hospital is a small community hospital, that receives private funding. The population of the local area is pretty conservative. Every OB doc who was available became a part of this issue when it happened. Some were for it, some weren't. The ethics committee was called upon to make a decision. In the end the woman was transferred to a university hospital. The issue doesn't end there as it may happen again. Yeah, big...huge...can of worm there!
Today was pretty low key. The excitement came when we were notified that the above mentioned pressure ulcer is infected with VRE. Fun times to be had in the hospital!
Thursday afternoons are one of my current favorite times of the week. There are no classes and no clinicals on Fridays, and only the weekend to look forward to...even if it's spent reading and studying for Monday's exam.
4 comments:
Oh man. I've never seen a stage 3 let alone a stage 4. Pffffft. VRE you can have. My last clinicals my resource told I should take the only VRE case they had. I was like, nuh uh. This is my last day. Interesting or not I did not want to chance catching it and the patient was not in the requisite reverse isolation room.
Glad you're having fun.
oooh pressure ulcers, diabetic ulcers, they're all so.....ummm sad. have a good wknd!
One of my friends had an abortion at 23 weeks for a much-wanted but non-viable fetus. She was not allowed a trial of induced labor at her own hospital. Instead, her trusted MD referred her to the university hospital.
It was a horrible experience. The MD at the university hospital was rude and impersonal. He performed a D&C without analgesia following the induced delivery (he originally wanted to perform a D&E but she requested a trial of labor, which was successful).
She later asked her MD why he'd sent her to such an awful person and he didn't have a good answer for her.
It wasn't humane.
Wow you sure had fun this week huh?! lol.. I have been witness to a few ethical committees and they are no fun. I am glad this lady was able to transfer! VRE.. hhhmmm.. after a while you will that and MRSA many times. It is a joke among nurses that we will all eventually test positive for colonized VRE and MRSA because you are around it so often. Have a good weekend!
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