Scribe
Know Who You’re Talking To
A while back I was working with a physician and we had just seen a psychiatric patient. Someone had pointed out to me how it was dumb to have the psych rooms so close the pediatric side of the Emergency Department. I decided to bring this up with the physician, in hopes to stimulate some [...]
Bad mood
I woke up today in a bad mood.
The alarm went off at 5:20. It was dark out. I didn’t have time to eat breakfast or get coffee. I crawled onto my bike and had to rush to work to make it for a 6:30 shift.
Along the way I thought about the traffic ticket I had gotten [...]
How Not to Talk with a Doctor
While I’m Scribing, it is key for me to understand exactly why the patient is in the ER and provide an accurate history describing their illness. This is often difficult as patients are often terrible providing a coherent history.
Thus leading to this post by Ten out of Ten, outlining many different types of patients and [...]
A Great Compliment
A few days ago we received evaluations from doctors we have worked with. Most of the ER Scribes on our team are new this year and have worked for about 6-7 months, and this was the first time we received any feedback since training.
Here is what one of the doctors wrote on my eval:
“One of [...]
My first day as an ER Scribe
I was excited. The ER Scribe position is a dream job for a pre med student. When I first researched the position, I could hardly believe it. You mean you get to follow around ER doctors, take notes for them, keep track of lab results and xrays and cat scans, and you get paid for [...]
Battling Cynicism in the ER
"Ten out of ten? Really? Is this really the worst pain you could possibly imagine?"
"Wow, this person has been in the ER 15 times in the last three months. You know what that means."
"Where are the normal people?"
These are just a sampling of the kinds of thoughts I’ve been having lately during my job [...]
Drugs make you say funny things
One of the procedures that we often do in the ER is a “conscious sedation”. So far I’ve seen this done for placement of a central line and reductions (aka popping bones back into place). Patients are given a sedative, and instead of being completely out of out it, they stay semi-awake. They will respond [...]
ER Quote of the Day
Hospitalist to ER physician after discussing a particularly difficult case:
“Your role in the ER is to pick up the pieces of a broken health care system.”
Digest that one for a while.
Where am I? The South in the 60’s?
One of my most surreal experiences I’ve had in the ER had little to do with medicine. It’s more about how screwed up our world can be sometimes.
The story doesn’t need much commentary, so I’ll keep it to a minimum.
So, I’m working as an ER Scribe with a great doctor. The shift is fairly slow, [...]
Numb in the ER
I mentioned to a friend the feeling of numbness that develops while working in the ER. It hasn’t always been present for me, but often I have been so overwhelmed by what was going on around me, that I felt completely numb. The nurses and doctors seem numb as well, but it’s not because they [...]
