A medical student’s first day in the hospital turns into a day to remember.
She gets called in to observe a trauma involving a mother and three children involved in a motor vehicle accident, and this is part of her account of what happened (via WhiteCoat):
Soon the patient’s blood pressure fell into the 30s and then into the 20s. The anesthetist, constantly frowning, tried more blood, epinephrine. The heart rate rose and fell. The oxygen levels began to slip away. The abdominal bleeding seemed somewhat under control, but somehow he still was losing massive amounts of blood. The chest tube was patent, but no more blood had drained. They tried another chest tube in the left chest, wondering about a tension pneumothorax, but nothing happened to his oxygenation levels.
Doctors already remember their first cases, whether it’s in the hospital, emergency department, operating room, or clinic.
And sometimes, that’s not such a good thing, especially it involves such tragedy.
