This topic was written by : Dr.Marianne DiNapoli 1) My patient’s confused family member. I was sitting at my computer on the hospital ward, going about my business and writing my notes for the day. My patient’s wife approached me, with a stethoscope in hand, and said, “Excuse me, nurse?” Accustomed to being mixed up with the nurses, I asked how I could help. “A doctor left this in my husband’s room.” I looked down at the stethoscope, and it had the name of one of my (male) med school classmates engraved on it. My classmate and I were both dressed professionally, with our signature short white coats, and performing the same function on the medicine team. Yet because he is a man and I am a woman, he is a doctor and I am a nurse. Sigh. 2) My patient with no memory. On my neurology rotation, my patient’s brain disease had left her with a memory span of about sixty seconds. When we would visit her on rounds each day, she would interrupt us every minute to ask, “What’s your name? Why am I in the hospital? What happened to me?” We would patiently answer those same three questions over and over. My resident was letting me perform my first ever spinal tap, on this patient, to obtain spinal fluid for testing. I had observed a few before, and as the mantra of medical education goes, “See one, do one, teach one.” So as I was advancing a three-inch needle into her spinal canal, she kept asking her three questions, and we kept answering them. Once I pushed the needle in to the right space, and saw that beautiful spinal fluid flowing back, I couldn’t help but exclaim, “OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!” because I was so excited about the successful tap. Of course, the patient was terrified because I had a huge needle in her back and was yelling OH MY GOD. We reassured her everything was alright, and sure enough, the next minute, she was asking, “What’s your name? Why am I in the hospital? What happened to me?” If I was going to be an idiot and freak out about a successful spinal tap, this was the right patient to do it with. 3) My first laboring patient. The excitement of getting to catch your first baby in med school is unparalleled. I was thrilled to be able to participate, knowing I was probably going to be an OB/GYN. I was suited up, hair net, facemask and gown donned, right there between my patient’s legs and watching the tuft of hair peek through with each push. During one of her final pushes, she urinated all over me. Something about the baby’s head pushing up against her urethra made her pee come flying straight out, covering my facemask. I tried my best not to react, but I can only imagine the look of shock on my urine-covered face. Luckily, I don’t think the patient noticed, and I don’t think I got any on my actual skin. Lesson learned: ask the patient if they would like you to empty their bladder for them before they start pushing! Source
