There's actually more to us than just being the casual gas man at work. Over here in these parts, your friendly neighbourhood anaesthetists also wear another hat, the far more austere cap of an intensive care physician.
Not only do we knock patients under, we sometimes also keep them under for a much longer while in the intensive care department - apart from a myriad of other more onerous tasks ranging from life support to specialized medical therapies regulated to the patient at hand. Working in the shadows as it may be since most of our patients, hopefully if we do our job correctly by keeping them well and truly under, don't even recall our faces.
And that's the way we like it.
Which brings me to the topic at hand which is Code Blue, something we all dislike vehemently since not only does it involve some unfortunate life on the absolute precipice of free falling into oblivion, it also necessitates dropping everything we are doing at that moment to make a literal run for it. Seriously, I've been paged halfway through making out - exactly like what happens on those scandalous medical dramas.
But every little moment counts.
So it makes us even more agitated when we are confronted with the most ludicrous situations, like the one I had yesterday.
Doctor : Yes, you called?
Nurse : There's a Code Blue.
Doctor : Alright, what is it about?
Nurse : It's a Code Blue.
Doctor : Yes. What is it about? Tell me more.
Nurse : It's a Code Blue.
I could have sworn I was talking to a dictaphone. Or at least one of those mechanical voice messages that are put on a loop.
Rather than a junior nurse whose faculties seemed to have flown out of the premises the moment a Code Blue was called. Realizing that her greenness required some proper handling and patience, I refrained from reaching across magically through the telephone lines to strangle her properly.
And that was after asking repeatedly for the incidence that brought about the Code Blue. Yes, it was even more times than what I wrote above. Code Blue just means an emergency situation where a patient has suffered a cardiopulmonary arrest. What brought it about could be an infinite number of possibilities that would probably require all number of different medical procedures.
So you can imagine my consternation. Fortunately after the umpteenth time of trying to draw out the reason for the Code Blue, a far more senior nurse grabbed the phone away from her to explain.
Not only do we knock patients under, we sometimes also keep them under for a much longer while in the intensive care department - apart from a myriad of other more onerous tasks ranging from life support to specialized medical therapies regulated to the patient at hand. Working in the shadows as it may be since most of our patients, hopefully if we do our job correctly by keeping them well and truly under, don't even recall our faces.
And that's the way we like it.
Which brings me to the topic at hand which is Code Blue, something we all dislike vehemently since not only does it involve some unfortunate life on the absolute precipice of free falling into oblivion, it also necessitates dropping everything we are doing at that moment to make a literal run for it. Seriously, I've been paged halfway through making out - exactly like what happens on those scandalous medical dramas.
 |
| Damn, is that your pager or mine? |
But every little moment counts.
So it makes us even more agitated when we are confronted with the most ludicrous situations, like the one I had yesterday.
Doctor : Yes, you called?
Nurse : There's a Code Blue.
Doctor : Alright, what is it about?
Nurse : It's a Code Blue.
Doctor : Yes. What is it about? Tell me more.
Nurse : It's a Code Blue.
I could have sworn I was talking to a dictaphone. Or at least one of those mechanical voice messages that are put on a loop.
Rather than a junior nurse whose faculties seemed to have flown out of the premises the moment a Code Blue was called. Realizing that her greenness required some proper handling and patience, I refrained from reaching across magically through the telephone lines to strangle her properly.
And that was after asking repeatedly for the incidence that brought about the Code Blue. Yes, it was even more times than what I wrote above. Code Blue just means an emergency situation where a patient has suffered a cardiopulmonary arrest. What brought it about could be an infinite number of possibilities that would probably require all number of different medical procedures.
So you can imagine my consternation. Fortunately after the umpteenth time of trying to draw out the reason for the Code Blue, a far more senior nurse grabbed the phone away from her to explain.
No comments:
Post a Comment