For the first time - but definatley not the last
I haven't blogged in awhile. . .it's not because I haven't had exciting stuff happenining - its quite the opposite; I've had WAY too much excitement & thus haven't blogged at all. I'm still on Surgery for the next week - but then I can go back to some similance of normalicy (like not getting up at 4am).
Anyway, I was on call the other night & 10 minutes after our call started, our Trauma Pagers rang out in unison telling us that we had a level 1 trauma coming in - and it was serious. The trauma team congregated outside the trauma bay & the chief resident barked out orders - one of which was "no one goes in the room unless they are needed & doing something." My job as the lowest ranking trauma team was to "get the story" from the Aerocare nurse.
Fastforward to 3AM: the gentleman's wife has arrived from out of town. She knows that her husband was in a serious car accident - and her worst fear is that he was paralyzed - my job is to be part of the 3 person panel (the chief resident, the midlevel & I, the lowly med student) who must tell her that her dear husband did not survive. It was not my first time at having to have a conversation like this - but it was my first time being on the "giving" instead of the "receiving" end. I have learned through experience that there is no "right ways" of doing it - but there are definatley WRONG ways of delivering bad news. I was very impressed with our Chief Resident - he was caring & compassionate and yet still had the appropriate aire of professionalism.
Trauma surgery has taught me many things - but it is probably the lesson I learned this night that I will take with me for the longest - which was given to me by the midlevel resident. He asked me later, "so, was that the hardest & most awful thing you've had to do thus far?. . .well, I'm just telling ya - its never gonna get any easier - and if it does, then something is wrong."
Anyway, I was on call the other night & 10 minutes after our call started, our Trauma Pagers rang out in unison telling us that we had a level 1 trauma coming in - and it was serious. The trauma team congregated outside the trauma bay & the chief resident barked out orders - one of which was "no one goes in the room unless they are needed & doing something." My job as the lowest ranking trauma team was to "get the story" from the Aerocare nurse.
Fastforward to 3AM: the gentleman's wife has arrived from out of town. She knows that her husband was in a serious car accident - and her worst fear is that he was paralyzed - my job is to be part of the 3 person panel (the chief resident, the midlevel & I, the lowly med student) who must tell her that her dear husband did not survive. It was not my first time at having to have a conversation like this - but it was my first time being on the "giving" instead of the "receiving" end. I have learned through experience that there is no "right ways" of doing it - but there are definatley WRONG ways of delivering bad news. I was very impressed with our Chief Resident - he was caring & compassionate and yet still had the appropriate aire of professionalism.
Trauma surgery has taught me many things - but it is probably the lesson I learned this night that I will take with me for the longest - which was given to me by the midlevel resident. He asked me later, "so, was that the hardest & most awful thing you've had to do thus far?. . .well, I'm just telling ya - its never gonna get any easier - and if it does, then something is wrong."
posted by dr.larissa @ 11:48 AM
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