Entertained a patient (i.e med student workup) while the consultant (attending) spoke to her wine club rep on the phone about a special on French merlot. 45 minutes. Yay.
Flipped through an enormous stack of lab results sorting them into "normal" and "abnormal" piles - and this was in residency!
Also - this was as a med student - paged to a delivery on call and just as things were getting interesting the fellow sent me for coffee for her and the resident - ie, sent to wait outside the coffee shop until it opened so that I could bring back their morning lattes... grr...
Not me, but an intern I worked with once got out of all the rest of the work on his surgery rotation by getting a YEAR's worth of dictations caught up for the surgeon.
As an intern: Came in one morning on wards to find that a new overnight admission had a creatinine of 20-something with grossly altered mental status. Called bed board to facilitate transfer of patient to MICU. After 30 minutes of waiting, didn't hear back. Called housekeeping myself to clean a bed in MICU so my patient could move from floor to MICU; harrassed housekeeping; found out MICU bed not empty yet because floor bed not clean; harrassed housekeeping to clean floor bed. Hunted down clean transport stretcher; personally moved patient from MICU to floor; harrassed housekeeping to clean MICU bed; hunted down clean transport stretcher #2; then moved my original patient from floor to MICU.
As an intern: Wheeled a VA pt to radiology to get Xray. Wheeled him back when it was done. Called for result. Was told it wasn't done because he never got there.
As a medical student: sat in a fellow's car in the parking garage for an hour charging the battery since it had needed to be jumped earlier that day.
Same rotation: fellow sent me out to get takeaway dinner for the entire call team (paid for by the attending surgeon). Apparently that doesn't include the medical student, since I wasn't allowed to have a sandwich.
Needless to say, not a popular rotation. Not a popular fellow.
as a med student: scrubbed in on a case on my surgery rotation with notoriously sweaty attending. midway through surgery attending is dripping with perspiration. turns and gives me a funny look and says "i'm sorry" as he proceeds to lean over and smear his sweaty brow all over my shoulder.
upside: i was no longer sterile and got to scrub out. sweet!
Sent by OB residents to get their takeout food from the hospital lobby...and they didn't give me any money to pick it up. Bitches.
Made up the "scutbucket" every morning and wrote all the skeleton notes for the 30 or so surgical patients before 5:30am surgical rounds.
Babysat psych patients in the cafeteria while the aides went on break.
Personally picked up every chest xray film for all new admissions before medicine rounds (this is obviously pre-PACS) so that we could look at them during attending rounds.
Scut I have made my med students do when I was an intern: get the tele report for all the patients on our cards service every morning and have it ready when I came in to pre-round.
Hmmm... the only scut I remember doing was from Ob. Looks like I'm not alone in that department! Hee. Mostly it involved getting food that had been delivered to the lobby. And Oh! I wasn't allowed to have any.
Though honestly, I was relieved to be able to get off the labor floor for a little while. I usually would sit in the lobby for 10 extra minutes and call my husband, since it was nightfloat and I didn't see him at all. If they bitched that I took too long, I'd say the delivery guy came in the wrong entrance.
On OB: picked up dinner delivery for everyone except myself, sent to gift shop because the chief resident wanted gum, hand-carried 20 units packed RBCs from the blood bank to the delivery suite in anticipation of a placenta accreta (which I was not allowed to come near), transporting patients to and from radiology.
On medicine: making f/u appointments for patients because the care coordinator is too busy shopping on JCrew.com.
Sent to "walk" a patient. Didn't know exactly how to disconnect this lady from the wall suction, oxygen and whatever other tubes she had on. Got halfway down the hall when the NG tube she was holding started spewing her gastric contents all over the place. I had to hold back my own gastric contents.
Spent a whole week on my family medicine rotation coding 6 months worth of patients' visits, filing with insurance, and alphabetizing all the charts for the entire clinic!
I spent most of my surgery rotation doing what the cartoon depicts. Our med school hasn't changed much.
Then every afternoon, when all the labs came back, I had to write each patient's results on a sticky label, go upstairs to the surgery office, and make copies of the labels, so everyone would have the results for PM rounds.
It beat standing around, doing absolutely nothing, seeing absolutely nothing during 10 hour Whipples.
holding a retractor during a vag hyst from the outside of the legs in lithotomy position (ie. i had my face in the sterile drapes covering her legs) and basically the attending would just move my hand and say "now stay right there" until she moved it again. thankfully, i didn't get my fingers sewn into the vaginal wall like one of my classmates did in that procedure!
Taken out of clinic by one of the residents on the team to hold pressure on the groin of an obese post-op patient, when I didn't even watch her operation or know why I needed to hold pressure there!
I managed to get through OB without any scut actually. I had amazing residents there. However on another rotation which shall not be named I was kept in during my lunch break to solve a quadratic equation for the doctors teenage daughter. Her homework. I tried saying that it was 10 years since I had had to do one of those and I would hate for her homework to be wrong, so then he ridiculed me for it in front of patients all do. MY LUNCH BREAK.
Scut I refused to do: An intern on Medicine (undesignated pre-lim at that who failed to match into Derm) once asked me to look up Happy Hour specials at nearby bars for a social event planned for after the workday - and made it clear that I was not invited. I said no, the other student on the service was more than willing to do it. I openly mocked him for his lack of spine and brown-nosing.
as a med student, had to babysit an orthopedic attending's 5 year old daughter at the clinic instead of seeing patients because her school was cancelled.
What is it with med students being sent to pick up food for the entire team on their OB rotations? I had to do that, too! (Though I at least got to eat some of it.)
yowza! as an ob/gyn let me apologize on behalf of my colleagues. although it shouldn't surprise me, because as a med student the ob team once ordered take-out for the entire floor (nurses, techs, residents, attendings, etc) right in front of my face, and didn't ask me if i wanted any. sucky bitches. clearly, i didn't stay there for residency!!
A medicine resident made me go halfway across town to pick up his dinner. From a burger joint, when he knew I was a vegetarian who couldn't get any food there. When I got back he mocked me for being a veggie and asked for his ($0.35!) change.
Response to Anon @ 8:24 who claimed "scut" but is actually suffering from "stupid":
Sent to "walk" a patient. Didn't know exactly how to disconnect this lady from the wall suction, oxygen and whatever other tubes she had on.
--So why didn't you ask her nurse for help? Perhaps she needed, ya know, OXYGEN to walk well.
Got halfway down the hall when the NG tube she was holding started spewing her gastric contents all over the place
--Gee, what a surprise! You took her off of suction, didn't put her on straight drainage and then her NG spewed. Huh. You should try publishing a case report out of that one... *very* unusual.
I had to hold back my own gastric contents.
--poor baby.
I'm sure your assessment was fabulous. I bet your note went a little something like this: S: This patient is SICK! O: She turns blue off of her oxygen and has increased work of breathing on exertion. Her NG is putting out, like, bile and stuff. A: This patient is SICK! P: She should be on oxygen and like, suction or something.
Gone to get lunch for the office staff on my OB rotation...
ReplyDeletedictated pre-op notes for the lazy and pregnant resident that was such a ridiculous southern belle while i was on OB!
ReplyDeleteEntertained a patient (i.e med student workup) while the consultant (attending) spoke to her wine club rep on the phone about a special on French merlot. 45 minutes. Yay.
ReplyDeleteFlipped through an enormous stack of lab results sorting them into "normal" and "abnormal" piles - and this was in residency!
ReplyDeleteAlso - this was as a med student - paged to a delivery on call and just as things were getting interesting the fellow sent me for coffee for her and the resident - ie, sent to wait outside the coffee shop until it opened so that I could bring back their morning lattes... grr...
Not me, but an intern I worked with once got out of all the rest of the work on his surgery rotation by getting a YEAR's worth of dictations caught up for the surgeon.
ReplyDeletean aging, female surgery chief resident made me carry her personal handbag on rounds.
ReplyDeleteAs an intern: Came in one morning on wards to find that a new overnight admission had a creatinine of 20-something with grossly altered mental status. Called bed board to facilitate transfer of patient to MICU. After 30 minutes of waiting, didn't hear back. Called housekeeping myself to clean a bed in MICU so my patient could move from floor to MICU; harrassed housekeeping; found out MICU bed not empty yet because floor bed not clean; harrassed housekeeping to clean floor bed. Hunted down clean transport stretcher; personally moved patient from MICU to floor; harrassed housekeeping to clean MICU bed; hunted down clean transport stretcher #2; then moved my original patient from floor to MICU.
ReplyDeleteAs an intern: Wheeled a VA pt to radiology to get Xray. Wheeled him back when it was done. Called for result. Was told it wasn't done because he never got there.
ReplyDeleteWheeled the pt back to radiology...
As a medical student: sat in a fellow's car in the parking garage for an hour charging the battery since it had needed to be jumped earlier that day.
ReplyDeleteSame rotation: fellow sent me out to get takeaway dinner for the entire call team (paid for by the attending surgeon). Apparently that doesn't include the medical student, since I wasn't allowed to have a sandwich.
Needless to say, not a popular rotation. Not a popular fellow.
as a med student: scrubbed in on a case on my surgery rotation with notoriously sweaty attending. midway through surgery attending is dripping with perspiration. turns and gives me a funny look and says "i'm sorry" as he proceeds to lean over and smear his sweaty brow all over my shoulder.
ReplyDeleteupside: i was no longer sterile and got to scrub out. sweet!
Sent by OB residents to get their takeout food from the hospital lobby...and they didn't give me any money to pick it up. Bitches.
ReplyDeleteMade up the "scutbucket" every morning and wrote all the skeleton notes for the 30 or so surgical patients before 5:30am surgical rounds.
Babysat psych patients in the cafeteria while the aides went on break.
Personally picked up every chest xray film for all new admissions before medicine rounds (this is obviously pre-PACS) so that we could look at them during attending rounds.
Scut I have made my med students do when I was an intern: get the tele report for all the patients on our cards service every morning and have it ready when I came in to pre-round.
Hmmm... the only scut I remember doing was from Ob. Looks like I'm not alone in that department! Hee. Mostly it involved getting food that had been delivered to the lobby. And Oh! I wasn't allowed to have any.
ReplyDeleteThough honestly, I was relieved to be able to get off the labor floor for a little while. I usually would sit in the lobby for 10 extra minutes and call my husband, since it was nightfloat and I didn't see him at all. If they bitched that I took too long, I'd say the delivery guy came in the wrong entrance.
On OB: picked up dinner delivery for everyone except myself, sent to gift shop because the chief resident wanted gum, hand-carried 20 units packed RBCs from the blood bank to the delivery suite in anticipation of a placenta accreta (which I was not allowed to come near), transporting patients to and from radiology.
ReplyDeleteOn medicine: making f/u appointments for patients because the care coordinator is too busy shopping on JCrew.com.
During my surgery rotation, I had to clean the stool off of the attending's forceps as he scooped it out of a patient's colon.
ReplyDeleteSent to "walk" a patient. Didn't know exactly how to disconnect this lady from the wall suction, oxygen and whatever other tubes she had on. Got halfway down the hall when the NG tube she was holding started spewing her gastric contents all over the place. I had to hold back my own gastric contents.
ReplyDeleteSpent a whole week on my family medicine rotation coding 6 months worth of patients' visits, filing with insurance, and alphabetizing all the charts for the entire clinic!
ReplyDeleteI spent most of my surgery rotation doing what the cartoon depicts. Our med school hasn't changed much.
ReplyDeleteThen every afternoon, when all the labs came back, I had to write each patient's results on a sticky label, go upstairs to the surgery office, and make copies of the labels, so everyone would have the results for PM rounds.
It beat standing around, doing absolutely nothing, seeing absolutely nothing during 10 hour Whipples.
holding a retractor during a vag hyst from the outside of the legs in lithotomy position (ie. i had my face in the sterile drapes covering her legs) and basically the attending would just move my hand and say "now stay right there" until she moved it again. thankfully, i didn't get my fingers sewn into the vaginal wall like one of my classmates did in that procedure!
ReplyDeleteTaken out of clinic by one of the residents on the team to hold pressure on the groin of an obese post-op patient, when I didn't even watch her operation or know why I needed to hold pressure there!
ReplyDeleteI managed to get through OB without any scut actually. I had amazing residents there.
ReplyDeleteHowever on another rotation which shall not be named I was kept in during my lunch break to solve a quadratic equation for the doctors teenage daughter. Her homework. I tried saying that it was 10 years since I had had to do one of those and I would hate for her homework to be wrong, so then he ridiculed me for it in front of patients all do. MY LUNCH BREAK.
Scut I refused to do: An intern on Medicine (undesignated pre-lim at that who failed to match into Derm) once asked me to look up Happy Hour specials at nearby bars for a social event planned for after the workday - and made it clear that I was not invited. I said no, the other student on the service was more than willing to do it. I openly mocked him for his lack of spine and brown-nosing.
ReplyDeleteas a med student, had to babysit an orthopedic attending's 5 year old daughter at the clinic instead of seeing patients because her school was cancelled.
ReplyDeleteMy job as the med student in the ENT office was to wipe off the earwax from the scooper as the otology attending cleaned patients' ears.
ReplyDeleteWhat is it with med students being sent to pick up food for the entire team on their OB rotations? I had to do that, too! (Though I at least got to eat some of it.)
ReplyDeleteThat's right! GI (food) rounds: getting intern's lunchbox (which is halfway across the hospital) for her lunch.
ReplyDeleteyowza! as an ob/gyn let me apologize on behalf of my colleagues. although it shouldn't surprise me, because as a med student the ob team once ordered take-out for the entire floor (nurses, techs, residents, attendings, etc) right in front of my face, and didn't ask me if i wanted any. sucky bitches. clearly, i didn't stay there for residency!!
ReplyDeleteA medicine resident made me go halfway across town to pick up his dinner. From a burger joint, when he knew I was a vegetarian who couldn't get any food there. When I got back he mocked me for being a veggie and asked for his ($0.35!) change.
ReplyDeleteResponse to Anon @ 8:24 who claimed "scut" but is actually suffering from "stupid":
ReplyDeleteSent to "walk" a patient. Didn't know exactly how to disconnect this lady from the wall suction, oxygen and whatever other tubes she had on.
--So why didn't you ask her nurse for help? Perhaps she needed, ya know, OXYGEN to walk well.
Got halfway down the hall when the NG tube she was holding started spewing her gastric contents all over the place
--Gee, what a surprise! You took her off of suction, didn't put her on straight drainage and then her NG spewed. Huh. You should try publishing a case report out of that one... *very* unusual.
I had to hold back my own gastric contents.
--poor baby.
I'm sure your assessment was fabulous. I bet your note went a little something like this:
S: This patient is SICK!
O: She turns blue off of her oxygen and has increased work of breathing on exertion. Her NG is putting out, like, bile and stuff.
A: This patient is SICK!
P: She should be on oxygen and like, suction or something.