In at the shallow end
Posted on Monday 5th February 2007
Today was another first day at the hospital, but rather than being a proper on-call I was just invited in to get a feel for the place. We did a morning ward round (that went on till the afternoon) and then a few jobs as necessary.
Everyone was welcoming but I still got information-overload syndrome. There are many differences between here and the UK in terms of protocols and drug management. Fortunately most of the system is very similar so only minor adjustments will be required. One example of this is their use of US units. The UK, along with much of the world, uses the SI unit kPa for pressure, whereas here they use mmHg. I’m used to thinking intuitively in kPa, so I’ll have to do mental gymnastics until using mmHg becomes second nature.
They have far laxer admission criteria than I’m used to. At least half of the patients currently on the ICU would have either been denied admission, or booted out fairly smartly. It is probably because they have a much lower pressure on beds that allows more scope for accepting “dodgy” patients. Money is also a factor, as private patients will get a far higher level of input than publicly funded patients.
In many ways this should be a valuable job. The department has generated a lot of good quality research and they appear to be motivated and current. I’m going to have to pull my socks up fairly smartish as being on holiday for the past month has made my brain a little stagnant. I’m in tomorrow on another “taster” day and then it starts for real on Weds, which is my first on-call.
As another small housekeeping matter – if you are on a hotmail account please can you add my domain (rickinoz.com) to your allowed senders list as they are occasionally bouncing my update emails. Thanks
Hay Ric my head would be overloading too much information in one given go.Though glad to hear things are slowly working out for you.Im sure you will be fine thanks for the update