Every morning I make a resolution not to get into a conflict with any attendings for the day. I usually fail by 11am. I don’t know why. I guess I hate this service enough, and am irritated by some of the attendings enough, and wear my feelings on my sleeve enough, that that’s inevitable. I’m trying to help, but trying to help when I’d rather not be in the same unit at all really doesn’t do much good. At least it entertains the rest of the residents and the nurses, watching the fireworks. I just need to not talk in front of the attendings. At all.

I got to assist with a trauma ex-lap (exploratory laparotomy) today. The patient was just sick enough to need it, but stable enough that no one was really panicking. The attending and chief could spare a few seconds to tell me what they were doing. In textbook style, as soon as they opened the peritoneum, blood came pouring out onto the table. They packed all four quadrants with quantities of lap pads – I have no idea how they can ever keep track of how many went in where – until the bleeding was controlled. Then they started in the corner where they knew there were no problems, and proceeded to explore. Between me being there to be lectured and quizzed, the attending being an extremely conscientious character, and the chief being the inquisitive kind who wanted to see everything and visualize every possible maneuver (Kocher, Pringle, etc) while he was there, it was quite educational. And also beneficial to the patient, who did well.

(Kocher maneuver: reflecting the duodenum medially in order to visualize the head of the pancreas. Used in trauma to gain control of the IVC, and in surgical oncology to reach tumors in the pancreas. Pringle maneuver: clamping the porta hepatis (portal vein, hepatic artery, hepatic bile ducts) to get control of devastating hemorrhage from the liver that can’t be controlled with packing alone.)

The chief spent most of the day in the ER (nine patients in two hours on a weekday morning, as though all the old ladies in the city had decided to fall and hit their heads at once, while several un-drunk drivers managed to have serious accidents), and complained that he hadn’t been able to see the unit patients. I, on the other hand, had more than my share of the unit, and would gladly have bailed out of it to share in the chaos in the ER; but we each had to stick to our own responsibilities.

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