My New Favorite Nurse:

Second night of call last night with a new resident. She has an interesting style - she told me early in the afternoon that I was maxing out at 5 admissions but would only tell me about two. I guess she thought she was doing me a favor but it sucked knowing I was going to get hit with three more patients and have no information to work with.

No interesting cases to report, although I did get a page at 3am for a guy whose arm suddendly exploded with fluid. He was understandably distressed, but it looked pretty cool. I'm bettin' he had a clot in his arm but since I was only cross covering I never found out the results of the test I ordered.

And let me tell you about my new favorite nurse - let's call him Murse Melvin. Melvin speaks with a very strong lisp such that when you talk to him on the phone you don't have the slightest idea what he is saying. He would call and I would hear my patient is a pain give me IV Lomotil when he was trying to tell me that his patient had pain and needed Ibuprofen. The result - I had to go see his patients every single time he called to figure out what they needed. But that's not even his best quality. Melvin likes to keep you up to date with his patients. He wants you to know everything. Therefore, he feels it is necessary to page the doctor (me unfortunately) at 2:30 and 4:30 in the morning to tell you that his patients vital signs are now normal.

You are supposed to page the doctor if there is something important to be done. What am I supposed to do with normal vitals? I suppose I could have gone and smacked his patients around to change that but I am not sure that would be appropriate. Maybe Melvin wanted a medal for being able to use the automated blood pressure cuff well. I got less than a 1/2 hour sleep last night because of crap like that.

On the bright side, as of 1:30 this afternoon, I am off until Monday morning.