I survived my first 30 hour call! Here is what happened for the most part (from what I can remember)
We had morning rounds, and I got through my patient ok, thanks to some help from a fellow student to told me pertinent things to comment/check on. We went to breakfast, and then had student presentations with the doc in charge of the students. We went back to L&D, and I met the midwife whom I would be following with for the week. Since I was the student on call though, and the other student went home sick, the attending asked me to scrub in with her for a tubal ligation. I did that, and everything went well. Hung out with the midwife some more, did some scut, then went to lunch. Came back, saw a circumcision, was asked to go see a patient in the ER with the ER resident on the OB service. Did that (pt had a miscarriage), then had a 15 yo come in with severe preeclampsia, so we put her on mag with orders for a c section if no progress . Had a csection for a breech baby around 10 pm, finished around 11. Attending tells me to go sleep for an hour and a half since we were going to break the water of another patient, and she would deliver within the next couple hours.
So I take a short nap, wake up (body hates me for waking up), go see patient, who eventually delivers a baby around 2:30 am. This was my first full vaginal delivery and I had no idea it was that bloody....yech. I also did not receive a formal orientation to L&D since I got called into the tubal ligation, which made things interesting when my (very chinese/unintelligble) attending put my hands on the baby's head and told me to start delivering! I told him I didn't know what to do so he basically just pulled the baby using my hands. Same thing when he handed me scissors and tubes and I guess expected me to get the cord blood. We got things cleaned up and all was well and good...
At that point it's 3:30 am I think to myself "Ok, we have no one in labor, the doc said 'ok thank you we are done,' so maybe this means I can sleep until morning rounds." Good thing I put my phone number on the call board (which my classmate said to do but the nurses would never call if something came up), because sure enough around 4:30 I got a phone call "Where are you? The patient is bleeding and she is in the OR right now.' At that point I'm thinking oh crap, I could get in trouble for sleeping...thankfully the attending was a nice guy and didn't get mad but I'll have to remember to not always assume everything is well after a delivery. I guess the patient who had delivered had a cervical tear that needed to be repaired, so we did that for two hours...it kept on bleeding and bleeding and the doc had to cut everything he had just sewn up and redo it. Finally we got the bleeding taken care of, and it was time to round. Thankfully the morning attending was late to rounds because it gave me time to actually go see a patient. A lot of students in that case actually BS the presentation and just present the info from the resident's note without actually seeing the patient, but I think that's wrong and lying and can't do that.
We then head to breakfast, and then to the administrative meeting, which we are required to attend but is basically all the docs going over housekeeping stuff, and some case review. The case review was mostly surgical stuff and them debating different techniques and equipment. It was interesting but it took 2 hours! Sitting on a hard aluminum chair when you've only had 2.5 hours of sleep listening to stuff that is over your head and that you can't contribute to was difficult in the sense that I was trying not to nod off. I actually didn't feel that tired at that point. I felt much better than I expected.
I got home around 11, and slept until 1:30 or so. I didn't want to sleep too much and interrupt tonight's sleep schedule. I have call four more times in this rotation (twice in one week at some point) and hopefully I get lucky and have one of the good attendings, because I've heard not all of them will let you sleep for anything.
We had morning rounds, and I got through my patient ok, thanks to some help from a fellow student to told me pertinent things to comment/check on. We went to breakfast, and then had student presentations with the doc in charge of the students. We went back to L&D, and I met the midwife whom I would be following with for the week. Since I was the student on call though, and the other student went home sick, the attending asked me to scrub in with her for a tubal ligation. I did that, and everything went well. Hung out with the midwife some more, did some scut, then went to lunch. Came back, saw a circumcision, was asked to go see a patient in the ER with the ER resident on the OB service. Did that (pt had a miscarriage), then had a 15 yo come in with severe preeclampsia, so we put her on mag with orders for a c section if no progress . Had a csection for a breech baby around 10 pm, finished around 11. Attending tells me to go sleep for an hour and a half since we were going to break the water of another patient, and she would deliver within the next couple hours.
So I take a short nap, wake up (body hates me for waking up), go see patient, who eventually delivers a baby around 2:30 am. This was my first full vaginal delivery and I had no idea it was that bloody....yech. I also did not receive a formal orientation to L&D since I got called into the tubal ligation, which made things interesting when my (very chinese/unintelligble) attending put my hands on the baby's head and told me to start delivering! I told him I didn't know what to do so he basically just pulled the baby using my hands. Same thing when he handed me scissors and tubes and I guess expected me to get the cord blood. We got things cleaned up and all was well and good...
At that point it's 3:30 am I think to myself "Ok, we have no one in labor, the doc said 'ok thank you we are done,' so maybe this means I can sleep until morning rounds." Good thing I put my phone number on the call board (which my classmate said to do but the nurses would never call if something came up), because sure enough around 4:30 I got a phone call "Where are you? The patient is bleeding and she is in the OR right now.' At that point I'm thinking oh crap, I could get in trouble for sleeping...thankfully the attending was a nice guy and didn't get mad but I'll have to remember to not always assume everything is well after a delivery. I guess the patient who had delivered had a cervical tear that needed to be repaired, so we did that for two hours...it kept on bleeding and bleeding and the doc had to cut everything he had just sewn up and redo it. Finally we got the bleeding taken care of, and it was time to round. Thankfully the morning attending was late to rounds because it gave me time to actually go see a patient. A lot of students in that case actually BS the presentation and just present the info from the resident's note without actually seeing the patient, but I think that's wrong and lying and can't do that.
We then head to breakfast, and then to the administrative meeting, which we are required to attend but is basically all the docs going over housekeeping stuff, and some case review. The case review was mostly surgical stuff and them debating different techniques and equipment. It was interesting but it took 2 hours! Sitting on a hard aluminum chair when you've only had 2.5 hours of sleep listening to stuff that is over your head and that you can't contribute to was difficult in the sense that I was trying not to nod off. I actually didn't feel that tired at that point. I felt much better than I expected.
I got home around 11, and slept until 1:30 or so. I didn't want to sleep too much and interrupt tonight's sleep schedule. I have call four more times in this rotation (twice in one week at some point) and hopefully I get lucky and have one of the good attendings, because I've heard not all of them will let you sleep for anything.
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