Our first overnight in the ER was eventful and a success.
Right away we began helping patients that have yet to be seen. Some of them had
been waiting for two hours or longer. If it wasn’t for us students taking the
initiative to check up on the patients who knows how much longer the patients
would have been waiting around to be seen. The doctors and nurses would just
sit at the nurse’s station and chat rather than help a patient; I mean we are
in the ER! Obviously the patients need urgent care, but yet they sit there and
wait and wait. So, the overnight crew consisted of Allison, Chris, Joel, Lee,
Trey, and me. As we begin to make our rounds in the ER, we start talking to the
patients about what the problem is and then we referred to Dr. Abdulhussein on
how to handle the situation. Our first patient seemed to be very lethargic and
unresponsive. Our team drew up a blood sample that was sent to the lab to test
for hemoglobin and blood glucose. Her results came back normal and so then we
hooked up an IV to push fluids in her. I swear by the end of the night I became
a professional at setting up IV bags. I think I put together about six IV bags
of saline. The next patient who had been waiting around for two and a half
hours had some type of severe vaginal bleed that had lasted for more than five
days. So with so much blood loss, a blood transfusion was ordered for the
patient, which didn’t arrive until almost an hour or more surpassed. One thing
to note is the hospital staff work at a sluggish pace, thus why we see so many
of the patients suffer in agony for a long period of time. Last night we were
attending to one patient after the other as fast as we could. As the ER began
to die down around 3am and ready to leave, a patient comes in that was mugged
and stabbed multiple times, mainly on his head and hands. Right away when he
walked in, we laid him on a bed to start cleaning him up and hurried to get an IV
started in him as well as get blood drawn. Because the patient had lost so much
blood, it was very hard to find a vein because of vasoconstriction. Each of us had a job responsibility from trying to get an IV started, cleaning his wounds, injecting pain medication, and doing whatever else was needed. It took almost a half hour of trying,
but eventually it worked out. After getting a couple IV bags of saline ran
through him, we cleaned up his wounds and put a dressing around his head until
it was time for him to get an x-ray. We were with him for about three hours.
After an exhausting night in the ER, we felt we did the best that we could and
made sure the patients were seen by a doctor.
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