First Day

I always find my first long day a shock to the system, by long day I mean 12.5 hour shift. I'm nackered! Today was good, it's a good department, friendly staff, keen to teach.

We had a trauma call for a 3 year old child who had fallen out of a window from a 4th floor flat onto concrete. Amazngly he seemed to have little injury, a few lacerations to his head, and was soon moved from resus to our ER. As I was leaving they still hadn't cleared his spine/neck and he was still strapped down, but they weren't very concerned about him. Children of that age quite often seem to bounce and come away with little injury. There was some query over how the accident ocurred but when asked the child verified the story given by his grandmother who had been looking after him. The scary thing was that in her panic she had run down to him and picked him up adn taken up him back upstaris before calling an ambulance, fortuantly he didn't seem to have any spinal injurues. The resus bay was incredibly busy with the trauma team, medics and nursing staff as well as several observers including myself who were cleared out soon after he arrived. It must have been very frigthening for that child to have some many people fidding with him and gawping, but he was incredibly brave.

We had several young children with bad asthma and/or chest infections, a very cute little baby with Sickle Cell who came in having had a floppy episode and had another one in the department and was very unwell at one point, he went to high dependany looking a loo brighter than he had before but without explanation for the episodes.

I sat with a Bengali mother who spoke very little English, not uncommon where I work. I find it one of the most frustrating things about the hospital I have trained in; the extremely high percentage of people who speak little English, if any, and rely on their children to translate for them (which in a hospital setting is rarely appropriate). I do find it incredible sometimes that some these people have come to the country, not being able to speak a word of the language, and they are so isolated in their communities that they will never learn to. However, I digress, though that was relevent I suppose to try adn explain some of my frustration surrounding that particular client group. Today I had a wonderful conversation with this Bengali mother, it was limited what she could say to me and what she understood but she was telling me about her child (who has a rare syndrome (Cat Eye Syndrome) and very complex needs) and for once I really felt like I had a connection with my patient/family, something I rarely feel when there is a language barrier.

This was only intended to be a short post, it wasn't even that much of an eventful day! I'm off to join my hotwater bottle in bed and get some much needed sleep in preparation for tomorrow. Apologies for typos. The spell check button I've only just noticed doesn't seem to be working.