leaving an impression
On my last day of work at the ED last term, i was asked to help cannulate a 5 week-old baby girl cos the paediatric registra was busy sorting out other kids. I took a look at the baby's hands and was just went ahead with it. after the cannular went in and while waiting for the blood tubes to feel, a senior at the ED noticed what i was doing and was genuinely utterly amazed that i was doing it all by myself, that that i didn't ask for help from any nurse (cos usually when you take blood from a kid you need to have 1 or more nurses there to pin the kid down for you) and that i was able to cannulate a 5 wk-old. so he announced it to the entire ED of how brave I was and everything, to the point that i even got a bit embarrassed.however i wasn't that proud of myself. cos i felt heartless. to me, cannulating a kid's just like cannulating an adult. i know it will hurt them, but it has to go in and so let's not make any fuss about it. what's a little bit of pain? the end justifies the means. Besides, learning to tolerate physical (or emotional pain) helps strengthen the character, for an adult or a kid.
But the more he was going on about my bravery, the more i was displeased with my insensitivity. that's not the sort of impression i'd like to leave people.
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On my first day at work at this new ED, an IVDU (intravenous drug-user) came in with a STEMI (a mega heart-attack). His veins were all damaged from chronic usage for drug injection and both the ED Reg and i could not find a vein to insert a cannular. i even asked the guy where he last injected some drugs (cos apparently, he just took some heroin to help settle the chest pain from the heart-attack!) hoping that the vein could still be used. i eventually got some blood from his foot with a tiny needle. While i was waiting for the blood tubes to filling, i could see the night-shift intern coming in to work. A blonde girl.
The tubes were filling very slowly. I was getting a bit impatient. There were patients to be seen, 2 doctors were tied down with this one patient here, but the blondie just stood there chatting away with some other staff that should also be doing some work. eventually i got enough blood and i nearly marched up to her, introduced myself, asked if she was an intern or RMO. "What time does your shift start?" 10pm. I looked at my watch, 10:30pm. Um, late and still not picked up a patient!!! "have you worked at an ED before?...oh good....here's where we keep the triage notes so you can just pick one up...(and see a patient)."
I can't believe i said that. of course i said everything with a smile on my face. but it just wasn't the thing to do, despite how displeased i was with some people's lack of work-ethics (or just a bit less than mine). a bad impression indeed, and i'm too ashamed even to go into what sort of witness i was being for Christ in this particular situation.
i totally regretted this and couldn't help thinking about it a few times over the next 2 days. thankfully, i made up for it by being extra nice to her the next time i met her...
The lessons here are 1) to think before i act, slow down my pace; and 2) don't expect everyone to be like me. pple are different. These are very old lessons.
posted by zhinger @ 10:18 pm
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