Sleepless in Duty

When we met our CI he quickly mentioned his relief because we are all non graduates in our group. It turned out that he endured three consecutive hellish, sleepless nights wrestling against the Monday to Wednesday Group-who are all consisted of second courser with some are registered doctors and dentists.

What happened was that when he welcomed that group for their 10PM t0 6AM duty last Monday, he noticed that one of the girls was chewing a gum. So he told the girl that next time he won’t tolerate it. Since our CI was a freshly graduate, Batch 2006-he hasn’t got a Masteral yet, and was definitely younger than anyone in the group, the girl thought that she can pick on him. The girl answered back by saying, “Sir, what was the rationale behind that?” So he calmly expressed that that it is very much unethical if they would face other hospital personnel and the patients while chewing a gum. The girl retorted that she’ll just stop chewing it once she’s in front of them.

And our CI recounted the rest of his night’s misfortune of meeting our Group’s Monday to Wednesday counterpart (we are the Group 1 and they are the Group A). I wanted to ask why he didn’t give the girl an incidental report but our group has an agreement to not to meddle with other group’s and other school’s affairs inside the ward so I just exclaimed my disbelief by gasping “grabe naman yun.” and by contorting my face to look that I am in disbelief and definitely appalled by the group’s insurmountable disrespect.

It must have been really hard for our CI. Actually I have never been really close with any second coursers, let alone those medical doctors and denstists. I’ve been hearing things about them from the other groups also. It was indeed brave for him to stand his ground against those huge (literally) people. And it wasn’t easy, imagine spending the whole night with them, boy, that’s suicide.

By the way, I only have one patient last night. I didn’t really plan to take him as my patient since I wanted to have an easier night but because of some complications I took him and gave two patients each to my groupmates who are assisting the easier patients.

My patient was freshly released from the ICU just an hour before our duty. He has a CHD (congenital heart defect) but when I asked the parents about this, I was surprised when I found out that they didn’t know that he has a heart problem since birth. All they know was that he had a palpitation and he must stay inside the hospital until he’s better.

The task of taking the vital signs every thirty minutes wasn’t that difficult at all. All I had to do was read the heart rate on his cardiac monitor every thirty minutes and the check the other Vital signs manually. What really made me toxic was his ECG, everytime he moves, the line of the ECG on the cardiac monitor changes. One time it even became a straight line and the heart rate changes from 59 per minute to 107 per minute in just a manner of second. The nurse laughed at me and explained that the wire might just have been moved as he changes his position. He instructed me to check for the Glasgow Coma Scale but I find this ridiculous since he was asleep and snoring and even flexes his arms whenever I put the BP cuff.

It was indeed a tiring night, I didn’t sleep at all and we were not allowed to go out to est. thank goodness we all brought our own snacks and sandwiches… and he sterilized milk definitely calmed down my tummy.

PS Our CI postponed our duty tonight since he has to attend a meeting tomorrow morning from 8 to 2.