It's 6:51PM and I have a shift at 7:30 so I have to go to work now but I just got hit
with like an early evening fatigue.
I think it's because I stayed up late.
Usually, I get this fatigue like around 3pm but because I stayed up so late and I slept
in until like 1pm so now I'm getting it now.
So I think I'm gonna have some coffee before I go.
Anyway, ready for a night of adventure in the pediatric emergency department.
Coffee time!
Don't worry Candy.
I'll be back tomorrow morning.
Or are you more concerned about food?
Yeah?
Okay...
I'll feed you before I go.
Don't worry.
Candy, Paw!
Paw!
Good... good cat, here.
Eat your food.
Hey guys!
So I'm just getting home from my night shift.
And it was actually a pretty crazy shift.
There were several very sick kids and they were under my care.
I guess without going into too much detail, there was a child who was having hemoptysis--which
is basically coughing up blood.
And she had a medical condition where it was very possible that she could have bled a lot,
and it was a very scary situation.
Thankfully she did okay and I think that she's gonna go to PICU, which is the pediatric ICU.
I guess throughout the whole night, there were many instances where I felt really unprepared
and like inadequate to take care of these really sick kids.
It obviously makes sense that I'm not prepared because I have very little experience and
for today's patient there were several people helping me out so I was very well supervised.
So I never felt like I was alone and like the only person taking care of her but I feel
like it's really easy to kind of like feel down and feel like you don't know enough and
you're not good enough.
I feel like that's like a common theme.
I'm really glad that the night is over.
That was my first night shift of pediatric emergency room.
A lot happened but I'm home and I'm ready to sleep.
I'm having one of those feelings where...
I don't know if you guys watch Gray's Anatomy but there is a scene where Christina Yang
is like: "Should I sleep or should I shower?
I could sleep in the shower.
Oh but I'm also starving.
Have you eaten?"
That's kinda how I feel right now.
I wanna eat, I wanna shower, I wanna sleep.
I'm also really tired so I can't fathom eating that takes a lot of energy.
So on the way home I was thinking about getting a bagel but then I was like wow there is so
much chewing involved in eating a bagel.
I don't think I can handle eating a bagel right now.
So I'm gonna have some cereal and then I'm gonna head to bed.
So after that Monday night shift, later on that week, I think Thursday night I ended
up having the same shift as the same attending that I had on Monday night and I was telling
her later in the week that the whole incident with the girl with the hemoptysis really shook
me up and she actually felt the same way.
She told me about how she was telling her husband about it and I told her that I also
told my boyfriend about it.
And how it actually really helped me to talk about it with my boyfriend and with my close
group of friends from medical school.
I think that's really the important thing in medicine--there is a lot of life and death
things happening in shifts especially in emergency medicine and if you hold everything in, then
it can just become a huge burden to yourself and I think just having people that you can
trust and people that you can rely on whether they're in medicine or not, I think really
really helps and I think that can really help to prevent the burn out that a lot of people
see in emergency medicine.
I felt reassured that it wasn't just me and that my attending felt the same way.
She actually told me that hemoptysis is one of the scariest things that you can see especially
in pediatric population... she said probably second to angiodema which is swelling of your
mouth and airway.
Those two conditions are really instances where you have to really think ahead and make
sure you're prepared to intubate somebody if you need to and it's just a very scary
situation for I think not just me but for everyone involved.
So it was good to kind of touch base with her and talk about what she thought about
the whole incident.
If you guys watched my over vlog, I've been on nights for the past week so my schedule
has been 7:30pm to 7:30am.
And then I slept most of the day.
Tomorrow I start my adult ED block and I'm gonna be starting on days again.
So tomorrow I start my day at 7:30 am which means I have to go to bed early tonight and
wake up early tomorrow.
Someone from last vlog asked.
If 12 hour shifts 5 days in row is a lot.
And personally, yes.
But traditionally, residents used to work a lot more hours.
Residents were called residents because if you were training physicians you either lived
in the hospital or in housing supplied by hospital.
So you basically lived your life in the hospital and you were expected to dedicate most of
your time to taking care of patients and learning.
Nowadays there is regulations on how many hours you can work per week.
Typically in emergency medicine it's 60 hours a week thats the limit and in other fields
of medicine, other specialties, it's 80 hours a week.
And the reason why it's lower hours in emergency medicine is because there is really no downtime
in emergency medicine.
You're constantly taking care of patients.
Those are the hours that are limited by the ACGME which is the governing organization
that overseas the graduate medical education.
So 12 hours, 5 days in a row, it's a lot but it's a lot less than some of the other residents
have to endure in other specialties.
So as an intern, you just kind of do your hours and you just kind of go with the flow.
So it's been okay.
It's been tiring but it's doable.
Got my matcha, got my boyfriend!
So it's Sunday night, and today was a lot of fun.
It was nice to have the day off to do some of my favorite things like walking outside
in the sun, going to the park.
Playing squash, eating at some nice restaurants.
I think it's really important, especially if you have a really busy schedule, to take
the time off when you can to do some of your favorite things and really spend time with
people that you love.
I think especially in medicine when you have a difficult day.
Or a difficult case, which happens, it's really important to be able to talk about it with
people that are close to you whether they're in medicine or not.
I think that's the lesson that I'm learning from this past week.
Tomorrow I go back to the adult side of the emergency department.
It's gonna be tough waking up early in the morning again because I've been working nights
all week and now I'm going back to morning.
So I have to be at work at 7:30am it's kinda like being jetlagged.
Basically you're like in a completely different timezone so you have to adjust from nights
to days and I'm gonna have to do that a few times in the upcoming month.
So anyway, that's all I have for you today.
Thank you guys so much for watching!
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Byeee!