EMERGENCY MEDICINE

EMERGENCY
MEDICINE

                “And in the end, when the life went out of him and my hands could work no more, I left from that place into the night and wept – for myself, for life, for tragedy of death’s coming. Then I rose, and walking back to the suffering-house forgot again my own wound, for the sake of healing theirs.”

-          Anonymous ER Doctor

Emergency medicine was not my first choice in electives. I really want pathology but we only had limited slots that’s why I ended up in the emergency room as my second choice. We were only four in the group since majority of my groupmates don’t want emergency medicine because it is one of the toxic area in the hospital. They were asking me why I chose emergency medicine and I’m always saying that I am the first doctor in the family and I need to know a lot about handling cases as many people were looking for me. I also saying to them that I don’t care if it is toxic, or if I will not have enough sleep or eat late lunch or dinner because the more cases you will handle, the more you will familiarize on how to handle this patients.

For fifteen days, our rotations was only 12 hours duty, we were preduty from 7am to 5pm, duty from 7pm to 7am and post duty was always as relieved. Also, every day, we have TIntinnali’s hour which discusses the approach to different cases seen in the emergency room. We were taught about basic life support and advance cardiac life support. We also joined the megacode team which you will act in the scenario that they will give. We also taught on ECG reading, ABG reading, animal bite, how to read x-rays and CT scans, approach to pediatric and OB-gyne trauma, approach to patients with head and spinal cord injury and many other lectures. We also experienced to join their journal club where in one of the residents discusses about a journal regarding the help of tranexamic acid in head injury patients.
        

 Aside from so many lectures, I was exposed to different skills in emergency room. This further enhances my skills in inserting IVF, NGT and urinary catheter. I had unlimited trial of ECG placement and at the same time read the results properly. My history taking skills was also improved as I need to get the vital information as more rapid as possible. We had a lot of code blue, a lot of trauma patients and this help me not to be scared and hide at the back of your resident but to step front and have the initiative to handle the patients. They also want us to be independent and to manage easy cases on our own. They also allow us to join medical missions wherein we handled different patients ranging from children to elderly. In overall, I really enjoyed my rotation in emergency medicine. I learned a lot of things that I can use in my future practice.