Hey guys. I'm Siobhan, a first-year medical resident. I'm gonna be taking you guys along for the craziest day, kind of like two days.
So here's the rundown.
Start out with clinics from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
It's a rheumatology clinic, because that's the rotation I'm doing right now. Then 5:00 p.m. comes around and I turn into internal medicine
on-call resident. So that's admitting patients who are in the emergency department, taking care of patients on the ward. When 10 a.m.
rolls around I finish that. Normally I go home exhausted and sleep at that point, as you guys know, but this time
there's a resident research day. So come along for
24-48 hours of craziness.
So here's the clinic room that I'm in today.
You can tell it's rheumatology, because we've got a ton of bones and examples to explain what's going on to patients. Now
I'm just getting set up. I'm gonna review the first patient, so that when they get here, I'll be ready to see them.
So it's 12:30 now. I just finished seeing patients this morning. I saw a couple of new patients, one with new
osteoporosis, also saw a patient with scleroderma. So that's basically a tightening of the skin and that can happen
specifically in fingers, but it can happen all over the body. It can even happen in internal organs,
which can be really dangerous in the lungs and in the kidneys, you can imagine. Now
I'm just gonna finish up my notes, the notes that go to the family doctors and other specialists following with these patients.
And I'm just gonna be eating my food at the same time. So I made this this morning.
It's just tofu that's already been pre marinated and some frozen
veggies and a couple of noodles.
And I just throw them in and heat them up when I get to work, so
super super easy, like that's not even cooking and it's actually really good.
Wow, it's absolutely beautiful outside. And totally unheard of, I have got 40 minutes. Done with my notes from the morning
and I was just able to get some tea and sit outside,
maybe go for a walk for a bit and then head back to see my next patient. So
nice way to start the day.
Alright, it's 4 p.m. now, just finished up seeing the last patient this afternoon. Time to head over to the hospital
now, maybe I'll get a call room a little bit early, be able to put my feet up
before the craziness begins.
Okay at the hospital now, just got my call room key.
Okay, so here's the call room. I get a bed, phone,
window, very nice view actually and a little desk.
So just a couple of hours ago
I asked if any of you guys had any questions that you wanted me to answer in this video.
So thanks for getting back to me so quickly.
There are so many good questions, so here go a couple of answers.
So no, I definitely do not remember everything that I learned at medical school.
There are certain things that we don't see very much
and you kind of forget that.
I'd like to believe it's somewhere in the back of my mind though, so that if I need to learn it again
it'll come back quicker. Does being a doctor ever get boring?
So boring is not a word that I would use in terms of medicine at all. Sometimes
I wonder the same thing in terms of being super super super specialized and you see only one little thing every day.
But even when I talk to people who do that as their job,
they say no. They say there's enough variation and complexity to every person, because humans are all different, right?! So
so far I would say no. Alright,
so I think I just need to turn my brain off for a little bit and just be able to relax
before I go for handover in about 40 minutes.
So I'll chat with you guys later.
Alright,
it's just about five o'clock. Feels like I just changed costumes, like in a play or something. You know, now I'm into the night wear.
Alright, time to go for handover.
We finished getting handover. We did. And now we're gonna...
You actually have a consult, right?! Okay, and then we're gonna, we're gonna
hopefully get some food. Get some ice cream cake. Ice cream cake, yeah.
I'm sitting outside and eating it. Are you?
Okay, alright.
Lea, she's so funny. You know as much as it can suck to be on call and the long hours,
it's actually fun being there with friends though. And when you're all with good friends,
it makes it a more fun night. Anyway, don't you guys think that she looks like Rachel from Suits?
I'm so convinced of it, ever since the first time I saw her.
Okay, I'm gonna try to get a little bit of rest now.
Okay, I just got paged.
So just got two pages. One is to see a consult in the emergency department. It's 7:30 p.m.
It's kind of a good time to do the first consult. The second page is because a patient is trying to leave the hospital,
but they are really not well enough to do that, so I'm just gonna go up and see them and see what's going on.
Wow, that took an incredibly long time, it's actually 9 p.m. now.
I haven't even gone down to the emergency department yet, so I'm heading there now to be able to do this consult.
After all that the patient upstairs just left
without telling anyone, so I need to go upstairs and deal with that now.
Sort of how things are going, to make sure this patient is not going to be in harm this way.
What a crazy night, so as a code yellow is being called, so that's for a missing person,
goes over head, security, nursing, everyone that starts looking for these patients or this patient,
another patient has left the hospital without telling anyone and
needs to be brought back by the police. So I've had to do this all over again for a second person.
It's not even a full moon, I don't know what's going on.
Heading back to the emergency department to finally finish up my note on that original consult.
Very hard at work. Very very hard at work.
Then we got another consult, so I just did two back-to-back.
Okay, so it's now 3:38 in the morning. Went up to see that patient who was very agitated and actually the patient has fallen asleep now.
So that's good for the patient, good for the nursing, but of course when I'm up there, then three more new issues came up.
So
just have to deal with those.
Now I'm finally heading back to my
call room. So it's been busier than I expected, lots of little fires to put out throughout the day.
And unfortunately now that has sort of woken me up. I thought I was getting tired for a while, but now I'm all like buzzing.
It's very strange, I haven't had any caffeine since lunch.
Now time to get a little bit of sleep.
Who knows, maybe I'll be able to sleep until the morning. That would be so nice, especially because
I've got that presentation in the morning and I really want to be a little fresher.
So it's just before 8:00 a.m., my alarm just went off. I actually got a pretty good amount of sleep.
My
pager went off three times and it was little things that I was able to deal with
over the phone, one thing on the computer, so I didn't actually have to go to the ward at all. And
now I'm gonna go and find
teams to hand over, get a little bit of food and caffeine and get myself ready for this presentation.
Alright, it's now morning.
The day is beginning.
I'm changed, just ate a larabar and now I'm gonna be heading to Tim Hortons to go and get some tea
and
find the staff that I can hand over to. So it's just coming up on 9 o'clock, so she should be arriving soon.
It's 9:30 now, we've just arrived and get my game face on, focus, get ready for this presentation.
Just finished up, I got feedback on the presentation. It's nice to see friends. And you know, shockingly
I'm feeling super awake and wired, but I think that's gonna change pretty quickly, so I'm just gonna enjoy the day walk home and
then decide whether I'm gonna sleep or try to get some work done.
I'm gonna stop for a detour.
So I ended up getting the acai bowl.
And the first time I ever got one of these was actually when I was in San Francisco
and I loved it so much. This is the first time I'm getting it back in Canada, so I hope it's as good.
Alright, just got home. I know I was thinking maybe I won't sleep, but honestly I think I'm starting to fade at this point. So
I'm gonna eat my acai bowl and then go to sleep.
And I think it's what?! Like seven, no... How many hours? Eight hours and I have to teach clinical skills to medical students.
So the day just keeps going. Anyway, thank you so much for joining me.
It's all been great to have all your comments and puns on my Instagram photo.
I've been reading a lot of those, so thanks for making the call shift more interesting.
Don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already and turn on those notification buttons if you want to help me out.
I'll chat with you guys next week. So bye for now!