A new place... BGH Emergency Department
A new board....
actually a very fancy flat screen connected to the main computer. Instead of dry erase, we log onto the computer and place our name next to the patient's name and information.
As you can see here, it's empty. This lasted for all of about 2 minutes around 0530 this morning. I grabbed the picture quickly. Same kind of layout, 21 rooms and about 8 hallway beds labeled alphabetically. The cool thing is when labs are completed or radiological studies are done, they pop up next to your patient's name on the screen. No more continually checking back, you can see immediately what's been completed.
No real drama last night in the E.D. After fumbling around for about two hours trying to learn the system, searching for patient's charts, finding out where labs go, etc, I finally started feeling like I was getting back into a groove. Luckily the patients cooperated and we hit a lull around 2 in the morning.
Most of my patients last night were of the garden variety medical problem that really needs addressing. Several chest pains were directly admitted to our cardiac observation unit. My nausea and vomiting patients got drugs and were able to be sent home. The chronic pain users got a dose or two to carry them through to their next doctor's appointment (or E.D. visit, hey, I'm not that naive), and my sick guy with cancer got scanned and pain relief then got sent home.
My one interesting patient of the night came in as a head injury. All traumas go to ECMC, but this patient refused to go there so she came to us. She was involved in a domestic dispute where her former boyfriend hit her across the head and back with a cane, actually reportedly breaking the cane in half. She ended up with a clean CT (no bleeding, no fracture) and no bony injuries. That's not to say she won't be hurting for several days to come from her muscle and skin injuries.
While we were arranging for her to get home, it came out that this "boyfriend" has tried several times to hurt her and her family including: several other assaults, turning and leaving the gas on in the apartment so that the family would all die, stalking her and accosting her at her home, and other various sundry offenses. The police were called to escort her home, and Crisis Services was called. It seems they were familiar with her assailant when his name was mentioned because HE showed up at ECMC last night claiming that he had been a victim of domestic abuse. The Crisis Counselor had actually taken a report from him.
Who's to say what the real story is? We only get a part of the story... and to be honest, sometimes it's better not knowing. There'll always be another patient, another story... but not for 2 more days. I have 48 hours to reset my clock and turn back into a day person again.
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