Yes! I shocked my first living breathing patient yesterday! Essentially, the patient's heart was beating too rapidly and as a result the heart was not pumping blood efficiently. So we had to shock the heart to bring it back to normal. It was like on TV - I called for everyone to clear and then shocked the patient. Luckily for the patient, one shock was enough to bring the heart back to a somewhat normal beat.
There's this taboo in ED - never say that things are quiet... because Murphy's law dictates that once you said that, all hell will break loose... Well, that's essentially what happen today... In the first hour that I was there, all was Q-U-I-E-T... beds were empty... and then all hell broke loose. 4 trauma cases came in through the BAT phone (as in the cartoon "Batman" - when the police chief wants to summon Batman for help) within the span of 15 minutes. All of them were motor-vehicle accidents or MVA for short. (Don't read further if you are squirmish.)The most serious case belongs to a patient who literally had a side of the lower leg sliced off like a ham... I can see the leg bone quite nicely with parts of muscles still hanging, not to mention blood...
My elective term is drawing to an end... Next week, I'm starting Obsterics and gynaecology - babies here I come...
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