Platelets

One problem with hospital medicine is the increasing specialisation. This means that we know more and more about less and less.

Sometimes there will be a situation when juniors in a particular speciality know more about a particular problem then the registrar/consultant.

Hence when I am asked to ring the haematologist to discuss a platelet count of 700 in a person when they had an operation one week ago I roll my eyes in disbelief.

For the tenth time I ring haematology to be told the answer I got last week. They have had an operation and are therefore in a pro inflammatory state. Thus, this is normal. Please don't call us unless it goes above 1000.

But I am an FY2 so if I say this I am ignored.

Wasted

No I am NOT WASTED!!!

But I am going to start writing again. I mean if Max over at the telegraph can write a few letters and then get a job publishing articles then surely I can do it to?

I mean I even once got mentioned, inadvertently in the guardian!

So newspapers around the globe, I am happy for YOU to employ me.

Anyway, better write an article first.

I am going into GP training, that is if I manage to fill in all the paperwork that needs to be generated and pass my ARCP.

I am going into GP because I consider myself a generalist. People ask each other if there "more medical," or which speciality they are. I do not want to be that. I am a DOCTOR and I look after patients, not there ears or eyes, or bowels or mental state, but the patient.

Right, that'll do for now!

Why

is it that manager who used to be nurses try to sort out staffing problems by getting bank/agency nurses in at five minutes noticed or who take nursing staff away from one ward do this? Surely it would be more effective if they did the shift themselves? (and more cost effective?)

Why is it that doctors who are now managers continue to tell the people on the shop floor what to do, as opposed to working next us?

Dear

annoying medical student.

Please don't sound surprised when I say I don't have time to teach you when you earlier stated you don't have time to help me with bloods

Regards

Fuddled Medic

Dear

Respiratory nurse.

Please do not demand I drop everything to run and do an ABG on a patient with infective exacerbation of COPD, who the respiratory consultant has stated is doing absolutely fine, so that you can have a look at the results before you have to go for lunch instead of afterwards.

Regards

Fuddled Medic

Thank you...

to all the nursing staff who

1)didn't bleep me to come and prescribe paracetamol when it was already prescribed PRN
2)looked at all the drug charts to see if the fluids had been prescribed there before bleeping the Fuddled Medic
3)wondered if the FM had gone into AKI during her shift and made her a cup of tea
4)had an ECG done, taken some bloods whilst the FM was on her way to see the patient with chest pain
5)didn't get annoyed when the FM asked why a patient needed fluids or when she took five minutes to look at the U&Es
6)who bleeped the cannula nurse instead of me (as opposed to the FM asking down the phone if they had bleeped the cannula nurse)
7)who thought my request to await for a patients INR to come back before I prescribed warfarin was reasonable, as opposed to me "being funny."

Weekend

The Fuddled Medic agrees with the Medical Registrar on call that it would have been nice for his registrar to review the patient before calling the Med Reg, but is confused as to how useful the trauma and orthopaedic registrar would be in dealing with an acute stroke. Besides he was in theatre and wasn't answering his bleep