Anecdotal Antidote

In order to relieve the pressure of the last few weeks, I thought I'd include some of the nicer things in life.

Like teaching medical students.

I must say that I really do enjoy having these future doctors running around our wards.

Whether it's their unjaded enthusiasm or their quirky questions which display how much they do (or don't) know about the human body and life*, they remind us what it's like to be young and what ideal medicine is about.

And so this week I was pleased to receive a page from a 3rd year girl asking if she could watch me put in a cannulae** as he wanted to learn how to do them. And so despite the rest of the wards falling apart around me I agreed and walkeddown to the ward to take a break and do some teaching.

Found the med student and talked her through the procedure, explaining what equipment to gather and how to use it. Unfortunately the cannuale was needed on a sick dying man and so it wasn't really appropriate to let her do it, so I let her watch and then after that offered to let her put one in me.

And so after a year of putting them into patients, I finally had a cannuale put into me. It wasn't that bad actually. The girl missed and was nervous so didn't firmly push it in... but eventually she hit the vein and the look of excitement on her face was reward enough. The nurses passing by gave me strange looks but who cares... their fluid orders could wait.

She then turned around and asked "Can you put one in me so I can know what it feesl like?"

2 minutes later she was sporting one too.

It's little time outs like these that make work bearable.

* One such example given by a friend was "Um so what's a checkout chick?"
** the plastic tubes with needles that drips attach to to give you intravenous fluids