Well, that was quite a month that passed by...
I've been through 3 rotations since the last entry. And I've yet to continue work on my much-heralded San Lazaro Chronicles, which is merely gathering dust here at the DRAFTS section of my blog..
But come to think of it, it dosen't seem as important as my Fabella stories 'coz of the simple reason that we were not the first of our batch to rotate there (at San Lazaro). So I guess I might have to put it off indefinitely.. The hoispital stay there was unremarkable anyway. Hehehe
So off we went to Legal Med, or what they called The Medico-Legal Department in the hospital. I won't go through the day-by-day occurences because much of it was pretty dull anyway. Duties were still every 3 days, but the pre- and from-duty posts really rocked. =)
PRE-DUTY:
You're supposed to report to the PNP Crime Laboratory there at Camp Crame. There you would encounter rape cases, where you're supposed to examine the victim for documentation. Eh siyempre since I'm a guy, my job was purely clerical.. which suits me just fine... =D There were also some cases of physical examination of prisoners prior to transfer, which seemed like a formality more than anything.
DUTY:
The most toxic of the posts. You stay in UST for a good 24 hours (yes, its true, only 24 freakin hours!!) to answer all calls from the ERCD or TR-Pay for medico-legal cases, which you have to document via history and PE, let the relative and attending physician sign, and go back to the legal med office to type the rest of the papers! Its that freakin' simple!! =P Well, it should be simple as long as there aren't TOO MANY cases/calls that come through... Let's just say that during my duty night (with Johnny O. as my ever trusty sidekick), we were called down for 12 cases, 5 of which were people involved in the same vehicular accident!..And that was at around 9pm up to about 2am!!! Enough said... But in fairness to the "most nontoxic rotation" label, it was only here where I was able to actually finish volume 1 of the Handbook of Must-Knows! I just wish we had a laptop during those boring duty nights. Nakakasawa nasi yung sounds sa PPC ko eh..
FROM-DUTY:
This one takes the cake... UST expects us to be at Crame.... Whilre Crame expects us to be at UST... Go figure.. ;D
After 8 wonderful days at Legal Med, it was time to move on to Ophthalmology
Ok, here goes...
Ophtha was a bit different as compared to the other services I've rotated to, since it was the first time we got to experience "duty" status that dosen't require you to stay for the full 24++ freakin' hours! :D Non-duty clerks had to man the OPD and face the seemingly never-ending masses of ophtha patients that come to consult every day. Duty days were great, since you go home by 7pm. Other than that, I found my stay in Ophtha less than appealing... In fairness to the department though, I was really able to learn a lot, especially with regards to the proper ophthalmological physical examination. I even had the chance to observe a phaecoemulsification with IOL placement done by Dr. Say himself!! Ang bilis! At ang galing!!! :D
But there's a flipside to every story... Lets just say that in my opinion, the supposed "niceness" of the ophtha staff is seriously overrated.. and I'll just leave it at that... In other words, I left the service with a bad taste in the mouth..
After another 8 days, it was time to go to the department of Otorhinolaryngology (aka ENT)...
With ENT, the group prepared for the worst.. Feedback from other groups had made ourselves brace for the worst posible scenarios.. Impressions at the time were the following...
1. ENT has EXTEMELY LONG ORs (20 hours long pa daw, or even 8 hours just for a simple thyroidectomy)
2. ENT residents are really strict and mean
3. ENT duties are the most "wasakan" duties this side of Medicine
4. ENT leks to mass-admit on weekends
I won't argue with #3 and #4, since the duty days were REALLY TOXIC, and they really are fond of mass-admitting patients on Saturdays and Sundays, but I feel that they've been given a bum rap with regards to #'s 1 and 2. I myself assisted an ENT total thyroidectomy, which took about 4 hours. Not really ala-GenSurg speed, but reasonable enough, since they (ENT) take great pains not to hit the recurrent laryngeal nerve and preserve vocal function. And the ENT residents really rocked! I mean, they may be strict at first, but if you get to know then, they;'re actually a pretty cool crew. :D
Yes, contrary to popular belief, the ENT people do have ORs. That's why the department is called ENT-HNS (HNS stands for Head and Neck Surgery)
Here's a rundown of the duty posts:
Pre- and From-duty:
Similar to Ophtha, non-duty clerks have to go down to man the OPD at the ground floor. There you perform the complete ENT physical examination, using such tools as the ever-popular otoscope to the lesser-known items like the nasal speculum and the laryngeal mirror (which is more familiar in the hands of dentists). We encountered the more common cases that you see if you do OPD work at ENT like impacted cerumen, acute and chronic otitis media, pharyngolaryngeal reflux, postnasal drip, and even some cases of goiter presenting with an enlarging neck mass (duh!) with/without hoarseness.
I really enjoyed the OPD time at ENT. There's just so much you can do! The residents realized my enthusiasm and gave me the go-signal to perform some simple procedures done at the OPD (which the patients have to pay a little bit extra to have done :D) like ear irrigation to remove impacted cerumen. It's just too bad they didn't let me use the vaccum yet.. hehehe
I'm really giving ENT a serious thought when the time comes to choose Elective rotations. :D
Duty:
Duties, on the other hand, were just plain terrible! In the words of our interns, it was ":THE WORST". I mean, you're just a team of 2, running the entire 2 wards (which were filled with patients over the weekend) with various "weird" tasks like CT scans, neck ultrasounds, Thyroid function tests, Radio-onco referrerals, applications to St. Cosmas, clinical abstracts for DOTS treatment, and many many more...
Sobrang nakakapagod talaga... but in fairness to them, the staff aren't that strict when it comes to monitorings.. heeheehee.. plus the fact that you get another chance to "make money" from walk-in patients from the ER by way of the ever-famous "donation box" =D.
In short, ENT was very tiring, but it was a lot of fun. ORs I attended were a Total Thyroidectomy and a Tracheostomy (where thery even let me suture!)
That's enough for this entry. I'll follow-up later on with stories from Derma and (hopefully) the San Lazaro Chronicles..
