First Call ever ....

Acute Pain - one of intern anesthesia months.
It's been busy so far. Acute pain is mostly epidurals and regional blocks. What it means is that we put local anesthestics specifically near a certain nerve that would help with pain control during operation and post operation. It's absolutely crazy in some areas that we can block. Epidural is one that we know well about since most labor and delivery patients have them, natural or C-section. The regional blocks, some are normal and some are very new, but nonetheless incredible to watch/assist.

My first call ever. I've managed to not have any calls all through med school because the hospital I was at wanted all students to be there every weekday so we can't stay past midnight hence no calls. People are amazed at what I have gotten away with so far. It just makes it seem like I have had an atypical med student experience where I was not going crazy with stress and crazy hours during rotations.

The experience ... It was good actually. I only had to call my staff about 2 things. First was because the nurse mentioned something and I felt obligated to call and confirm even though I was pretty sure of my findings. Oh well, joy of being an intern where people just don't trust your judgement. The second call was actually legit where it was something that the staff is required to notified. Otherwise, my call started off with running between 2 PCAU, putting orders in, bolusing pts with pain meds, seeing new consults, and others. Then time was spent running between orthro floor and others. By the time I actually sat down trying to eat dinner it was 9PM. Then the pager decides to go off. I think I finally ate dinner around 10PM. I'm glad that we on call meal allowance so I can get AuBonPain. I normally don't get ABP cuz it's expensive but oh so good.

The pager finally quiet down a little before midnight and I had some time to finish off the new consults. The last consult was finished a little after 2AM and finally able to catch some zzz's. Woke up a bit before 6am for sign out and one 1st round block before taking off for post call day.

Not bad for 1st call ever. No disaster, got some sleep. Now hopefully, the rest of the month will go as well.