Hey guys. I'm Siobhan, a 3rd-year medical resident.
So you guys have asked me: what's a normal day like when I'm not on call and I'm not there for 26 hours.
So that's what I'm gonna show you today, internal medicine, a regular day. Now it's usually a little bit busier in the hospital,
there's more people around, so it is harder to film. So, let's see. I will do my very best to bring you along for everything.
Okay, so today I'm responsible for seeing new patients who come to the emergency department, who need admission.
So the emergency doctors will consult us and say ''Okay,
I think you guys from internal medicine need to see this patient and maybe admit them to the hospital.''
That will be me and then we also see patients upstairs who are already admitted under our team.
And I'm gonna be carrying 2 different pagers. One is the SMR pager and that's a code blue pager.
So if there's a medical emergency it will go off and I'll go running.
And then I'm also carrying the team D pager.
So if any of our patients need help, they can call me or any nurses or allied health professionals can get me on there.
Okay, so we've got about 15 patients upstairs on the ward, so I'm gonna go up and see them now.
*Pager goes off*
Maybe I'm not.
Okay, let's see what that page is.
Hi, this is Siobhan from Team D returning a page.
How much bleeding?
Okay, we'll be right there.
Thanks very much. Okay. Bye.
So this is a middle-aged man who's coming in with bloody diarrhea and a painful abdomen. Sounds like
he hasn't been traveling recently and maybe this has happened before, so I'll get the whole story from him and we'll go from there.
After scanning through the patient's blood work now it's time to go and find him in the emergency department.
I walk into the room and I find a middle-aged man sitting on the bed looking pretty uncomfortable.
He tells me that he's had abdominal pain and diarrhea on and off for a few months.
And that actually his wife has been telling him to go to the doctor for a long time.
Just recently, he started having bloody stools and that really scared him, so he came to the hospital.
So at this point the diagnosis still isn't clear. It could be infection, it could be inflammatory bowel disease, even cancer.
So I'm ordering a CT of the abdomen,
stool cultures and blood work and unlike in TV shows,
we won't actually get the results until later today or even tomorrow for some of the tests.
* Pager goes off*
Code blue, level 0 Diagnostic Imaging.
I think after that code blue,
I deserve to take an elevator.
Anyway, so code blue went well.
It was because the patient was having a seizure and I suspect that this seizure was probably due to alcohol withdrawal.
So we gave a lot of benzodiazepine to help
calm that down and then move the patient to a monitored setting.
So ehhh... Okay, back to work. I'm gonna follow up on the patients upstairs on the ward and just keep on going.
Alright, so back from the emergency department.
Now I'm up on the ward and I can actually see some of our patients who are admitted.
The first one that I'm gonna see is someone who has a bacterial infection in their blood that has gotten stuck on to
their heart, so it's called
bacterial infective endocarditis.
So I want to see if his blood cultures are still positive today.
And so far there's been no growth in the last 24 hours, so looks like things are going in the right direction.
And we're gonna continue on with the antibiotics. So we'll actually see how he is feeling.
Oh shoot... I had a feeling. First case of influenza this season.
So guys, flu season is officially upon us. Actually a good reminder, I need to get my flu shot this week.
I hope you guys do as well.
Because I always think about it like yes, I'm doing it to protect myself.
But I'm also doing it so that I don't get the flu and pass it on to
people who can't fight it off themselves, like babies or your grandparents or people going through chemotherapy and who are immunocompromised.
That's who we're trying to help.
So anyway,
highly recommend it! This patient needs some Tamiflu and some more puffers, because she's pretty wheezy and
now we're just waiting for her to get a bit stronger so she can go home.
It's 11:02, I'm running late for multidisciplinary rounds.
The focus of this meeting is to consider what barriers are keeping patients in the hospital and how we can set them up for success at home.
That could be housing concerns, nursing support at home or even added physical support to help prevent falls.
So taking care of patients is a lot more than just CT scans and prescribing medications.
Okay,
so...
This next patient is a lovely lady who originally came in for a pneumonia.
But while she was here, we realized that she was really struggling at home.
She's having a lot of falls and so we're trying to find to her a nursing home placement,
where she'll be a bit safer and get her needs met.
So it sucks that she's got to be here for so long waiting for a bed,
but she's bubbly. I honestly I always love stopping by and seeing her.
So it's 1 o'clock now and I actually have a meeting. It is not typically what I do at 1 o'clock.
But I have a really interesting opportunity
to be able to go visit Guyana and I'm hoping that I can vlog and actually show you guys the experience what the medical system is like.
So fingers crossed that this works out. I'm really excited about it!
This was a great meeting.
It looks like this trip is actually gonna happen, I'm so excited. And what the best part is,
I think that I'm gonna be able to bring you guys along.
Ok no more that fun. Back to the emergency department, looks like we've got a couple more patients to see now.
One of them is an elderly woman who's coming in really confused from a nursing home.
They're not quite sure what's causing it and she's become really disruptive and they're worried about her safety, so that
can be challenging because anything can set someone off from
constipation to infection, so we'll go and chat with her and figure out what's happening.
I'm gonna tell you that it feels good to be done at this point.
But though the life of a resident is not done yet.
Now I go home and I've got to study for a couple of hours, because I'm writing the Royal College Exam
for internal medicine in about 5 months and already we start to study pretty intensely.
So....
This is my crazy life,
I don't know. If you guys want to see more about it, if you're interested in seeing what medicine is really like, then don't forget
to subscribe and send me questions below because I love to hear from you guys.
Otherwise, I'll be chatting be with you in the next video. So bye for now!